Gus #2
‘They can!’ she said, laughing at herself now, while also sounding a little close to tears.
‘I’m not like you. I don’t have any of that easy banter, I don’t give off a relaxed vibe.
I’m what my friends politely describe as socially awkward, and what people who don’t know me would describe as standoffish and rude. ’
‘I don’t think you’re socially awkward or standoffish,’ said Gus, once he was sure she’d unburdened herself sufficiently.
It was quite sweet the way that she’d just let all that angst flood out and he felt surprisingly privileged to be the one she chose to tell.
Maybe she was opening up to him after all.
Or maybe it was just four in the morning and she was too exhausted to be inhibited.
He leaned forward in his seat, close enough to reach over to Violet who was now staring down at her knees.
‘Hey,’ he said gently, tilting her chin upwards so he could see her face.
‘Violet. Listen to me. You’re honest, that’s all.
You don’t pretend to like everybody and that’s okay. ’
She sniffed but kept her green-grey gaze fixed on him, her expression trusting.
He felt the sudden weight of responsibility.
She must be his junior by at least four years, and irrespective of what she said about not caring what people thought, he knew she valued his opinion.
He’d seen how attentively she’d listened when he was explaining his efforts at diplomacy with Mrs Jenson’s night sedation, and how keen she’d been to have him confirm her suspicions about Mrs ‘I’m not racist’ Boulter’s cardiac trace.
She valued his clinical judgement and seniority if nothing else, so he had to get the tone of this right.
Reassure and advise her without coming across as glib or patronising.
He also needed to ensure he didn’t make her feel uncomfortable about having exposed her vulnerabilities this way.
He didn’t want her to think he was taking advantage, and he was aware that this was an oddly intimate scenario; the two of them sat so closely together in the warm gloaming of the mess, long past midnight.
With that thought he reluctantly shuffled his position back into the sofa, opening up the space between them again.
‘People who want everyone to like them don’t tend to make great doctors either, you know,’ he said. ‘Because often you have to make decisions that are in someone’s best interests but not necessarily ones they’ll be happy about. And sometimes you have to tell them uncomfortable truths.’
‘Yes,’ Violet conceded after a pause. ‘I am quite good at the uncomfortable truths, like, “your knee arthritis is most likely related to your chronic obesity”, or “if you don’t stop smoking you’ll be on domiciliary oxygen by the time you’re sixty.
” I can definitely do that chat.’ She was sitting up a little taller now and gave him a tentative smile. ‘It doesn’t always go down well.’
‘You see, I’m the opposite,’ he said, relieved to see the gradual return of her determined expression. ‘I want everyone to like me. I’m a pleaser.’ He paused. ‘It’s a massive failing apparently.’
‘Someone called you a massive failure?’ She looked astonished, and he was touched by the note of concern in her voice.
‘Nobody said I was a failure,’ he said. ‘Just that my constant need for approval was a failing. That it was claustrophobic and clingy and nowhere near as endearing as it had first seemed .’ His voice was light but hearing Amelia’s repeated words ringing in his ears was harder than he had thought it might be.
‘Ouch!’ Violet winced. ‘I mean, I’m not particularly good at pulling my punches, but that is brutal . Who told you that?’
‘Oh, nobody,’ he said, wondering why on earth he’d opened this conversational can of worms. What was he doing turning this into a discussion about him?
Classic male behaviour, he remonstrated with himself.
Although at least it had distracted Violet from her own perceived failings. ‘Nothing. Just ignore me.’
‘ Really ignore you, or is that a veiled way of asking me to make further enquiries? I can’t tell. You see, if I was any good at this psychology business, I’d know what you wanted me to say.’ She rolled her eyes and he laughed softly.
‘I need a bit of your attitude, Violet,’ he said. ‘Because you’re right. Second-guessing everything is exhausting. Trying to work out what someone else wants. Life would be so much easier if we were all a bit more?—’
The piercing noise of a bleep broke the silence and they both reflexively looked down at their scrub pockets to see if anything was flashing.
‘Shit,’ he said, unclipping his bleep and peering at the number on the screen. ‘It’s me. Surgical admissions. Probably Wolverine sobering up.’ He shrugged apologetically at Violet. ‘I’d better get this.’
‘Of course.’ She looked a little disappointed. ‘I’ve got to go anyway.’
He dialled the ward from the mess phone and Violet picked up their mugs and took them to the kitchen.
‘Happy Boxing Day,’ she called from the door. ‘Don’t forget to bring your swimmers tomorrow night.’
The sister on the surgical admissions unit had picked up the phone and was in Gus’s ear. What? he mouthed back at Violet and she mimed getting into a swimsuit, adding some goggles, then pinching her nose and diving into the sofa.
He spluttered a laugh, gave her a thumbs up and returned his attention to the phone.
‘You’d better come now, Gus,’ said the surgical sister wearily. ‘Your man’s only gone and ripped out all of his lines and thrown himself on the floor. Told us it’s okay because his skeleton is composed entirely of titanium apparently.’
‘I’ll be right there,’ he said, watching Violet disappear through the doorway to the corridor and wondering which ward she was heading to next. He probably wouldn’t see her again before the shift finished.
He wasn’t sure what was making him seek out Violet’s company as he had over the past few hours.
Perhaps nothing more than the loneliness of night shifts– the particular recognition of another medic working in isolation, the shared experience of a Christmas so peculiar that nobody else could possibly understand it.
But he felt better about himself when he was around her– and it wasn’t simply that she was another doctor doing nights, or that she was younger and perhaps appealed to his sense of vanity by looking up to him, admiring him in some way.
He’d always enjoyed helping junior colleagues, offering advice, steering them through the peculiar complexities of their new life on the wards.
And he liked it when colleagues, or patients, confided in him, when he knew that somebody felt they could trust him– it gave him a good feeling, part of his constant need for approval no doubt.
But there was something different about Violet, something self-contained and single-minded that really made him want to grab her attention.