“So was I,” I said.
Chapter Eleven
The meeting was mind-boggling. I sat down the back with Lin and watched in amazement as the Powers That Be went head to head with a bunch of angry doctors. There had been shouting, heated discussion of the standard employment contract the hospital used, and threats of industrial action.
Lin and I sat in rapt silence through this, though I must admit that I kept my eyes on Andrew most of the time. He was so passionate, speaking at one point about the obligations of practicing medicine, and the hospital’s abrogation of its duty of care, and I tried to reconcile this aspect of him with what I’d seen the night before. What he’d let me do. How good it had been.
Lin nudged me at one point, while Andrew was talking, and whispered, “You’ve got it bad for him, haven’t you?”
“Guess so,” I whispered back.
Fuck, I’d been so sure it had been a one-night stand; that we’d just fuck and that would be it, and I couldn’t quite believe that he’d asked me over for dinner, and that he was happy for me to study at his place. That implied something I hadn’t really had a chance to think about. Was it possible he wanted a relationship? That would explain him lending me his shirt, leaving me to let myself out of his house.
He was shouting now, standing up beside the doctor who had lied about his patient, the same man I’d seen him talking to in the bar the night before. I thought of what we’d seen that morning, where he’d taken us in the hospital. I guess at an intellectual level I’d known that parts of the National Health were in that bad a state, but it was a shock to actually see it.
It made me want to shout, too, and those patients weren’t my patients yet. They would be soon, either here or in another hospital, and I wasn’t sure how I’d cope.
The BMA lawyer interrupted one of the hospital’s lawyers and said, “This is at an impasse. I suggest we stop now, we’re not making headway.”
The doctor that had precipitated this mess, the one who looked like he was Andrew’s friend, stood up and called out,
“Drinks are on me, ten minutes, in the bar over the road.”
Andrew slapped him on the back and pushed his way through the doctors who were all standing up, talking at the top of their voices.
“Good to see you both here,” he said. “Join us at the bar?”
Lin said, “We’d love to,” and Andrew smiled at us briefly, then turned to speak with the person who was tapping on his shoulder.
Lin grinned at me in the lift. A couple of other doctors got in, too, so I was saved from whatever teasing Lin obviously had in mind.
She stayed for one drink only, then left, presumably to meet up with Nevins, leaving me leaning uncomfortably against the bar, listening to the BMA rep try and persuade me to buy a membership. I wanted to leave, but I really wanted to talk to Andrew first. I guess I was still uncertain that he actually wanted to see me again. Wasn’t much I could do about that right at that instant.
He walked past me while I was at the urinal, and I wanted to turn and look at him, but pissing with an apadravya requires a degree of concentration. There was a bang, bang, bang and when I looked over my shoulder, he was pushing open all the doors of the cubicles.
Oh, yeah.
I followed him into the end one.
This wasn’t a particularly classy bar; there were needle disposal units in each of the cubicles, but the wall that I found myself pressed up against was clean enough.
The kiss wasn’t clean, it was wet and demanding, and I clung onto Andrew and kissed him back as hard as I could.
Fuck, his hands were pulling at my chinos and I was hard in an instant, groaning as he stroked me and sucked on the skin of my neck.
“Fuck,” he groaned, and I felt rather than heard the word.
Someone came into the bathroom. I could hear him whistling and pissing, then there were voices and Andrew was kissing me like there was no tomorrow, our mouths sliding wetly together.
He was hard when I found his cock through his clothes but he guided my hand away. “No,” he whispered. “This is for you.”
He flicked his wrist on the next stroke, and squeezed and I closed my eyes and leaned back against the cubicle wall.
One of the loos flushed, a hand basin tap ran, and I groaned. Andrew pushed fingers into my mouth to shush me.
There was a muffled chuckle from someone, and the door to the bar opened briefly, letting in a sudden wash of voices for a moment.
“Be quiet,” Andrew murmured, and he stroked me hard.
There are two ways I come. I can scream and thrash and clutch and groan and in general make a hell of a fuss about it.
Or I can hold still, legs trembling, stomach muscles quavering, keeping quiet.
It was the wrong one, and I think I bit Andrew’s fingers.
He was almost convulsed with laughter by the time I’d finished, and if I hadn’t been hanging onto the wall for support, and trying to collect my scattered wits and clothes, I might have thought it was funny, too.
“Jesus Christ,” an unfamiliar voice said. “Good to know someone is having fun.”
The door to the bar opened again and while I pulled my trousers up, Andrew stood on the toilet bowl and peered over the top of the cubicles. “All clear.” He clambered down and kissed me quickly. “I’ll pick you up at eight from your place.”
I gave him a couple of minutes to mingle back in the crowd, and for anyone watching to become bored with waiting to see who else walked out, before heading out of the bathroom and through the bar to catch the bus back to my place.
There was a fair bit of good-natured ribbing from my housemates for taking a guy upstairs and fucking, then disappearing for the night, but I just nodded and smiled and told them to fuck off back to engineer land.
I stuffed some textbooks and my laptop into my backpack, along with some clean clothes and a razor and toothbrush, then flopped down onto my unmade bed. I hadn’t planned on sleeping, in fact I had a microbiology textbook in my hands, but I fell asleep instantly.
Chapter Twelve
F slung a cheerful arm around my shoulders. “Andrew, you wanker.” He pushed a pint at me with his free hand. “Gonna get fired with me?”
“Absolutely,” I said. Right then, I didn’t actually care about much of anything, least of all losing my job. Matthew was adorable, I was picking him up later, we were going to fuck.
For a man with an over-developed social conscience, I was proving to be easily distracted by a little sex. Perhaps principles were for people who were celibate. Everyone else was too busy fucking to worry about anything else.
“What you thinking about?” F asked, leaning his head closer and ignoring the BMA rep, who was being boring.
“That I don’t fucking care if I’m going to lose my job over this. What the fuck does it matter?”
F shook his head and I began to suspect he was drunker than he seemed. Of course, he could just have
