“Looks like it,” Andrew said. “It has happened. Canadian doctors went on strike in 2002, Los Angeles doctors in ‘76.
Israel had a major countrywide strike that lasted for four months in ‘83. British doctors went on strike in the 70s.” He tapped my stack of printouts. “If you research the issue, you’ll find plenty of references to mortality and morbidity falling during a strike. The figures are crap, don’t believe them. There is a temporary drop because of no elective surgery, but as soon as surgery restarts, the figures come back up, and nobody is prepared to talk about the overall impact on quality of life of that delay.”
I nodded, and he looked at the papers in front of me.
“Hospital policy statements?” he asked, taking the stack off me, and I tried hard not to colour. It was hard to match the way he intimidated me like this with the man who had given himself so completely the night before.
“Yeah. I was, um, looking at the, um, policy of using evidence-based medicine. I went looking for journal articles and they weren’t in the database because they were anecdotal.”
Andrew was nodding approvingly when I looked up again.
“Excellent. This is instead of the presentation I asked you to prepare?”
I nodded. I was in the shit, no way around it.
“Tie it to the topic I gave you, and that’ll be fine.” He handed the printouts back to me. “I’ve got a copy of Callahan in my office if you want to borrow it now.” He checked his watch. “I’ve got a few minutes before I’m due at outpatients.”
I gathered up my papers, jar, and tin, and waited while Andrew said a round of ‘goodbyes’ to the doctors and Dr.
Seagate threw marshmallows at him, then Andrew strode past me, muttering, “I’ve got twenty minutes, think we can manage it?”
I took off after him. “No problems,” I said, pushing past the gaggle of nurses at the cafeteria entrance.
Chapter Eighteen
The Rottweiler was painting her nails at her desk as I pushed open the door to the offices, Matthew right behind me. I took the handful of messages she thrust at me, tiny slivers of red crescents marking them, and said over my shoulder to Matthew as I led him to my office, “I’m not happy about this, Blake. I hadn’t planned on spending my lunch break dealing with your crises.”
“Sorry, Dr. Maynard,” Matthew said, plaintively. “It’s a family matter…”
I unlocked my door, ignoring the beady eyes that had followed us down the hall. “In you go,” I said, holding the door for Matthew.
There was a lock on my office door, but it only worked from the outside, presumably cunningly arranged by the hospital to stop its staff from having sex on company time, but I closed my blinds, then wedged rolled up photocopies firmly under the door. Of course, if I was a consultant, my office would lock from the inside, and then I, too, could disconnect the smoke detector and smoke joints in it.
When I slid my hands around the back of Matthew’s neck and pulled him close, Matthew said, “You’re not serious about this, are you?”
“Oh, yeah,” I murmured against his ear. “Completely serious. I’m not going to see you until Monday at the earliest…” I kissed his neck, sliding my lips across his skin, inhaling the scent of him. “Not that I wouldn’t rather be safely in bed with you, preferably at my place where there are no drunken housemates, but I’d settle for your place if I had to.”
Matthew’s hands pulled the stethoscope from around my neck and tossed it onto the floor. I made a mental note to tell him how much a Littman digital cost one day, then his hands were unbuckling my trousers, and I had to bite my lip to stifle my moan.
Fuck it. I could always buy another stethoscope.
He was hard, too, and I could feel the bead of his piercing through his trousers, then my hands were sliding inside his trousers, and he was there, rock hard in my hands.
He kissed me deep, long and hard, and I pushed his trousers and underwear down roughly, then picked him up and deposited him on top of the mess on my desk. Stuff fell off the sides, coffee cups and paper and books, and I bent down and rummaged around in my briefcase for lube and condoms.
He rolled his own condom on, easing it over the beads, then I took him into my mouth; deep, long, and hard, too, his moans muffled by his hand. This was good, more than good, and I ignored the footsteps in the hall outside and the sound of traffic coming through the window glass.
What mattered was this, and right then I would have given anything to really taste Matthew, for him to come in my mouth. I thought of platitudes, and discarded them, and eased my fingers between Matthew’s thighs, into the creases and grooves of his body. Over the acrid latex, I could smell him so clearly, his sweat thick and cloudy, and slick under my fingers.
He spread his legs, more than enough invitation for me, so I grabbed examination gloves from the box on my desk. They weren’t as good as sterile gloves, but I wasn’t planning on leaving the office to hunt some down. I cupped his balls, toyed with his raphe briefly, just a brush of a finger, then pressed fingertips against his ass.
“Fuck,” he whispered.
Cecelia next door was singing ‘Killing Me Softly,’ and it occurred to me that Fox and Gimbel would probably kill her, and not very softly, for what she was doing to their precious song.
I wasn’t going to push my fingers inside Matthew, not without lube, and when I lifted my mouth from his cock he was holding the lube ready for me.
Fuck, he was so beautiful, lips parted, tip of his tongue showing, and I kept my eyes on his face while I pushed two fingers slowly inside him.
You think I’d be over the wonder of this, considering it was pretty much what I did professionally, but Matthew whimpered and pouted and kissed me, and I could have spent all day on that desk, finger-fucking him slowly until we both went insane, but we were under time constraints here, and the insanity needed to happen faster than that.
The feeling of the latex rolling down my cock was almost enough to make me scream, then Matthew smeared lube down the length of my cock.
“I’m ready,” he whispered, and he lay back across my desk Cecelia was murdering John Denver next door, proving herself remarkably sentimental for an oncologist. “…true yesterday la la tomorrow is open la la seems to la la just to be…” she sang, and I pushed slowly into Matthew, infinitesimally slowly, and then there was that moment where the head of my cock eased into him.
I groaned and held still, and Matthew’s eyes were closed and his mouth open, and he was breathing hard. I leaned forward, kissed his neck, whispered something, and began the slow sweet slide, deeper, until I was all the way in.
Matthew was trembling now, biting on the side of his hand, and I held still.
Cecelia sang, “…lost and la la on some…” and I was sure she had the order of the lyrics wrong. I thought briefly about buying her a book of lyrics for Christmas, but decided that might just encourage her. Perhaps I should buy her singing lessons?
Matthew whispered, “All right, you can move now,” and I stopped trying to distract myself.
I leaned forward, grabbed Matthew, pulled him a little closer to the edge of the desk, sending more stuff tumbling onto the utilitarian carpet tiles. We might have been better off on the floor, might have done less damage there, but it was a bit late to be thinking of that.
This had to be slow; anything faster would send the desk thudding into the wall of the office. Fuck, but it felt good to be buried inside someone, inside Matthew. I hadn’t done this for a long time and it felt delicious. Matthew was so tight and hot around me, and he was squirming on top of the slew of photocopies, keeping himself quiet with one hand, stroking his cock with the other.
I hitched my shirttails up a little higher, trying to keep them out of the lube, and concentrated on making each stroke as deep and as slow as my self-control would let me.
Matthew’s shirt had ridden up, leaving his belly exposed, and it was this more than anything that began to
