Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Hartford
It had been a long time since I’d worn a dress.
The ten-year-old scar on my leg had faded so it was almost invisible now, but every time I glanced at the silvery river on my calf, panic started to stir.
Memories threatened to push through, and I remembered why my teen crush on Joshua Luca had ended so abruptly.
Tonight, at least, the scar was hidden by the plaster.
I lifted my chin and forced a smile at nothing and no one in particular.
“You okay?” Joshua whispered. Gerry, my soon-to-be boss, had gone to collect drinks while Margo, his wife, was checking on dinner.
The other four diners—all members of the pediatric department—chatted and laughed at in-jokes I just knew I wouldn’t get even if I’d been working with Gerry for five years.
Luckily, my broken leg gave me an excuse to perch on a bar stool off to the side, away from the center of the action.
Joshua stood dutifully by my side, looking as comfortable in his skin as he always did.
Margo was impossibly glamorous, so my dress and ruffles weren’t out of place at the dinner.
Just out of place on me. I wasn’t built for styled hair.
Or ruffles. Or glamor. By the time I might have cared about those things, I had already trained myself to focus on work to the exclusion of nearly everything else.
Slowing down long enough to wander through shops or experiment with hairstyles would have invited my mind to wander—and that was the last thing I needed.
“I’m going to stain this dress,” I whispered back, deliberately looking over Joshua’s shoulder so I wasn’t taking in the crisp, white, open-collared shirt that made him look even more tanned than usual. He looked like he belonged on a yacht.
“Impossible. It’s black.”
He didn’t know me very well. I was pretty sure I could ruin anything in my way. Especially when I was nervous. I pulled the skirt of the dress down.
“Below the knee isn’t short,” Joshua said through smiling teeth. He’d spent the car ride trying to convince me that anything below the knee was acceptable in a business setting. Except we weren’t in a business setting. Medicine wasn’t business. Not to me, at least.
“Do you even know who we’re eating with? Gerry is the pediatrician that all other pediatricians want to be. Rumor has it, the Prime Minister has him on speed dial and he’s turned down the job as Chief Medical Officer for the UK more than once. How on earth am I going to impress him?” I replied.
“Just be yourself.” He glanced between my eyes and my lips, down to my chest and then back up again. Unintentionally flirting. He really couldn’t help himself. “You’re funny, sort of charming, and you look beautiful.”
I rolled my eyes. Joshua had all the charm over on his side of the room.
This was why he had women flitting around him constantly.
In the supermarket earlier this week, two female assistants asked if they could help him, not even noticing I was standing right next to him—on crutches no less.
The girl on reception in the lobby of the residences always said hello to him.
She’d never even looked in my direction.
Even Margo blushed when they shook hands, even though she was at least twenty-five years his senior. Joshua Luca was a pussy magnet.
“I don’t adult well.”
“You’re a doctor,” Joshua said. “That’s pretty much the definition of adulting.”
Joshua didn’t get it. Doctoring was my safe zone. I knew what I was doing when I had a child in pain in front of me. I knew how to soothe, examine, and do what I needed to do to make a diagnosis. And I knew how to heal. Outside of the hospital, all bets were off.
“Here we are.” Gerry came toward us carrying a glass in each hand. “Two Old Fashioneds.”
“A favorite of mine,” Joshua said, beaming at Gerry.
Gerry grinned. “Mine too. Some men prefer straight whiskey but I love me an Old Fashioned. Especially after a game of tennis. I feel I’ve earned it when I come off the court.” He chuckled to himself. “Do you play, Hartford?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t even offer him an alternative—No, sorry, tennis isn’t my game but I love squash/netball/golf. Nope, sport and I didn’t exactly mesh. Dance had kept me fit. Now, it was being on my feet all day at work.
“I like to pretend I can play,” Joshua said, interrupting my awkward non-reply. “I offered myself up for some charity game at Queens a couple of years ago and got thrashed by Andy Murray. Stopped pretending after that.”
I started to laugh. That had to be a joke, right? Surely not even Joshua Luca could have had a game of tennis with Andy Murray.
“It was a thrill all the same though, being beaten by one of the best.”
“I bet it was.” Gerry’s eyes were wide. He was clearly impressed, but who wouldn’t be? “I love the game. Always played. Keeps me young.”
“I should get you to come to the charity game next summer. Maybe you’d be able to beat Andy.”
Joshua was completely comfortable in this environment—dishing out compliments and invitations to the tennis like Gerry was an old friend. At this rate, Joshua would get promoted ahead of me, despite him not having any medical qualifications.
“I’d be completely delighted, young man. Any excuse to get my racket out or watch others play. Margo and I are debenture holders at Wimbledon. Go every year without fail.”
“I’ll arrange it,” Joshua said.
“And you should maybe teach Hartford to play. I’m a big believer in balance.” Gerry turned as Margo tapped him on the shoulder and pushed another Old Fashioned into his hand. “Cheers,” he said, lifting his glass.
“Balance,” Joshua repeated. “Absolutely. Keeps you fresh.”
Almost imperceptibly, Gerry shifted closer to Joshua.
“Not being one hundred percent about the job actually makes you more efficient, more perceptive, better. So few people get it. They just want to bank more and more hours. Having a life outside the hospital is a key performance measure when you come to practice under me.” He nodded in my direction.
“I’ll be expecting you to show me the balance in your life, not just prove you can help patients. ”
What the hell did that mean?
“I’m a devotee of Alex Soojung-Kim Pang’s approach to business,” Joshua said, not skipping a beat. “I never have my best ideas behind a desk.”
Alex who?
“Good man.” Gerry gave what I’d come to recognize as his trademark sharp nod to Joshua, then turned to me.
“If you’ve just come back from Medicines Sans Frontiers, you’re going to have to work at balance.
That kind of environment consumes you. But it’s not sustainable.
Learn from Josh here.” He clapped his hand on Joshua’s shoulder like they were old friends.
For a moment I wondered how much Felicity, my boss back in Yemen, had talked about me to Gerry.
She’d tried to encourage me back to London for months before I broke my leg.
Told me I needed to date, take up knitting, work somewhere a siege wasn’t imminent.
She’d told me it would do me good to go home.
But I loved what I did over there. I was really helping people, and it was so busy the weeks and months just flew by.
When I broke my leg, I had to leave. I was a burden if I couldn’t work, just taking up a bed and food.
So I was forced back here. It wasn’t a choice I’d have made willingly.
“I like to be busy,” I said. “And I have loads of energy. I suppose I’m just lucky like that.”
“You need rest.” Gerry’s face was stern, like an overbearing Victorian schoolmaster.
“That doesn’t mean lying on the sofa watching God-knows-what on the Netpix.
It means time away from the hospital spent engaging in meaningful activities that bring you joy.
It means caring for yourself, investing in the people in your life, and creating a life outside the hospital. ”
Gerry sounded a lot like Felicity. I guess it wasn’t surprising—Felicity had worked with him and recommended me for the position. But I couldn’t help wondering whether she’d warned him about me.
“I tell everyone who works with me the same thing,” Gerry continued. “How much you heed my advice will reflect in your appraisals. I’ll expect you to report to me every two weeks with what you’ve been doing outside of work, as well as what’s been going on in the hospital.”
He couldn’t be serious. I mean, people talked about balance and self-care, but as long as I was being a good doctor, what did it matter?
“During your time with me, I want you to become not a good doctor, but a great one. And you can’t do that if you’re always working.
It sounds counterintuitive, but you have to trust me on this.
You can’t be great if you don’t give your mind and body time to recuperate from the intensity of your work. ”
I could see Joshua nodding out of the corner of my eye. He was a bloody gazillionaire. There was no way that happened by taking every Friday off.
“Space for thinking and time to let your mind expand is the only way to be truly successful,” Joshua said. I tried not to roll my eyes.
“I’m so pleased Hartford has got someone to encourage her down this path.
” Gerry nodded to me. “Think on what I’ve said.
We’ll talk again soon. Like I said, I’ll expect updates every two weeks starting at the end of next week.
” He glanced at Joshua. “You’re going to have to watch her for me.
Excuse me. I’m just going to help out Margo. ”
I pulled my face into a smile as Gerry turned on his heel and left.
“So thanks for taking my side,” I said under my breath.
“Sounded to me like we were all on the same side—yours. He’s trying to help. So am I.”
Of course Joshua wouldn’t get it. I enjoyed being busy. I didn’t want to veg out on the sofa and watch cooking shows.
“Were you always this . . .” He narrowed his eyes as he looked at me and . . . I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t tear my eyes from the flecks of gold sprinkled across the blue of his irises, the sweep of his eyelashes, the strong, raw jut of his chin.
He didn’t finish his sentence so I did it for him. “Stubborn? Opinionated?”
“I wasn’t going to say either of those things.” He pushed his hands into his pockets in a way I’d seen him do a thousand times. “But your boss is telling you what he wants from you. He’s giving you a roadmap to impressing him. I thought that was your aim?”
He was right but it didn’t make him less irritating. I didn’t want a hobby. Cut me in half and I was medicine all the way through. “How would you like it if someone said you had to change the way you were at a fundamental level and work for the rest of your life behind a desk, doing data entry?”
He had a funny habit of pausing before he spoke. I couldn’t decide if he was trying to draw things out to torture me or he was thinking about what he was going to say. Either way, it made me want to fill the silence. “I’d do it if that’s what it took to have the career I wanted,” he said.
Urgh. When he put it like that, it sounded so obvious. It wasn’t so easy for me, though. I didn’t know what I would do if I wasn’t working.
“It might help you settle into London and find new friends. You never know, he might even be right, and it might even make you better at your job.” Joshua looked at me, and it was as if he knew I wasn’t buying what he and Gerry were selling.
“You understand physiology, right? It’s like running.
No one would say that running all day every day would make you faster.
Your body would just give up in the end.
All athletes cross-train and have rest periods.
With work, it’s the same. You need time to do other activities and time to do nothing at all.
It will make you better at work. I promise. ”
I did want to impress Gerry. Even if I didn’t stay at the hospital forever, a good reference from him could make my career, while a mediocre one could blow it.
If doing less was the way to get the career I’d always dreamed of, then I suppose that’s what I’d have to try to do.
It wouldn’t be easy. The idea of free time was like a thundercloud blocking out my sun.
I didn’t want to think about who I was when I had time to do something other than obsess about medicine.
I liked the busy, productive, focused me much better.
“I have no idea where to start. I’ve never had a hobby.
Don’t even suggest tennis—I’m hopeless.” I didn’t have any interests outside of medicine.
Not since before university. Not since the accident.
“You like to cook. What about taking some lessons?”
“Cooking isn’t a hobby. It’s a means of survival. If I didn’t cook, I wouldn’t eat.”
“So make it into one. Start making cakes or preparing sushi or something.”
Would it be that easy to placate Gerry?
“Baby steps,” Joshua said, reading my mind. “Maybe you can give me a cooking lesson or two. And then when you’re cooking, I bet you find something else to do. That’s the way creativity works—it needs space to expand.”
“I’m passionate about what I do. I’m a good doctor. What’s the harm in that?”
“There’s no harm in that unless it’s all you do. He’s right that if you have other things in your life, you’ll get better at your job.”
“I disagree. Look at Bill Gates. Does he have hobbies?”
“I hear he likes to play bridge. And Jack Dorsey is a hiker.”
“Who’s Jack Dorsey? Your mate or something?”
“Just the guy who founded Twitter. And Foursquare. And—”
“Okay, I get it. I’ll take up knitting or something.
” I knocked back a gulp of the Old Fashioned and winced.
I didn’t like whiskey almost as much as I didn’t want a hobby.
But with Gerry and Joshua on my back, I was going to have to try.
Maybe Joshua and Gerry were right, and time away from work would improve my skills.
What they didn’t understand was the reason I liked to work hard wasn’t just to get better at my job.
Medicine had been my balm—the ultimate distraction—for a long time now.
It was easy to forget the life unlived when you were focused on saving other people.
Nothing save medicine had the power to distract me from considering what could have been, and that was just the way I liked it.