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Her whole face hardens. “Is that what he said? He’s a liar.”
“Either he’s lying or you are. What’s more likely in this scenario?”
Her brow furrows as she tilts her head to one side, eyes losing focus. What has she taken?And Kate, honey, this little chat is getting you nowhere.She’s not the problem here, my problem lies elsewhere: in my terror of making a mistake once and repeating it.
“I have no idea why you’re here,” I say.
“I know who you are, where you are.” She points a shaking finger at me. “You stay away from him.”
A laugh forces itself up. After all the stuff I’ve been bombarded with this week, I don’t think I’ve got much say in it. If she had any sort of relationship with him, she wouldn’t be here confronting me. I should stop messing around and trust what he told me.
“Thanks for the memo,” I say. “Bye.”
I turn around, intending to head back to my patient, but Neil is standing behind the desk bent over studying something, and I know he’s heard every word. My face burns as I straighten my scrubs. Jesus, does my love life have to be waved in front of my colleagues like a red flag at every available opportunity? A clawing hand lands on my arm.
“Didn’t you hear what I said?” she hisses, and I see Neil stiffen, lift his head.
“Yeah, I did. Problem is, Nadine, I don’t think this is down to you or me.”
I pull back and turn, heading off up the corridor, and type out the first text I’ve sent Fabian since he slashed his vein in front of me:
Thanks for the flowers.
As I look back over my shoulder, Neil has come out from behind reception and has a firm hold on Nadine’s arm and is gesturing toward the door.
“I’ll get you, you bitch!” she shouts. “Watch your back.”
I focus down on my phone. The typing icon appears, disappears, then starts again. Once I’m round the nearest corner, I lean against the wall and stare down at it.Get on with it already!Is he sitting in his apartment feeling the same thing? My lips curl up. I’ve been on radio silence this past week, but my God I need to tell him what Nadine said about accessing his stuff.
Eventually, a text comes through:
I can’t think of anything clever to say to that, and all I’m doing is typing cheesy replies, so here goes: I’m glad you liked them.
The cards are nice too.
I love you, Kate.
My breath stops at this, staring at the words on my screen. Distant voices echo down the hallway from reception, the department phone ringing. What do I say?
I need to talk to you. Nadine turned up at work today.
Within seconds, my phone rings in my hand. This time, I pick up.
“Kate.” His voice is all growing urgency. “What the hell happened?”
“I’m still in the ER,” I say, looking around at the empty corridor. I open the nearest door and step into a consulting room. “My life is like a soap opera. You’ve no idea how riveted my colleagues are by all this.”
He lets out a huff of breath. “You sound cheery considering Nadine visited you.” A smile twists his voice, but then his tone tightens like a vice when he says, “What happened, Kate?”
“She told me to stay away from you, that you were hers. That you’d had sex with her.”
A muffled thud reverberates on the other end, like he threw something, possibly his phone. There’s a loud rustling, then he growls, “Fucking hell! It’s not true, not one word of it. I’ve not seen her in over ten years. That’s such utter bullshit.”
“She said she did things with you that no one else would do with you.”
“I can’t imagine what that would be,” he says sarcastically. “I did a lot of dumb shit with her. Did she say what? Drugs maybe?”
I didn’t even think of that.I gape at the bed in the consultation room. I interpreted what she said as a sex thing, but Fabian’s first thought is somewhere else. My God. My thoughts are so skewed.
