undo me.
I’d touched that skin, kissed that tattoo, come over it, slept with it pressed against my lower back … I took a deep breath, ran my fingers over the velvet skin and began to come, long slow waves that shook me, that made me clench my jaws tight to keep myself silent.
Cecelia had moved onto ABBA now, “…empty house la la tears la lala…” and I held onto the edge of the condom and pulled out slowly, then leaned forward and took Matthew’s cock into my mouth.
He moaned and clutched at my hair and I sucked him hard and he came almost instantly, thrashing around on the desk, causing more destruction, and I held onto his hips tightly, trying to still him.
He didn’t make too much noise, not like at the bar, and I stood up.
Oh, yeah, this was the unattractive, partly dressed man with a loaded condom dangling from his cock look. I dumped the condom and gloves into my rubbish bin and pulled my boxers and trousers up while Matthew struggled up to a sitting position.
“Fuck,” he whispered. “That was hot.”
I helped him to his feet and he wobbled unsteadily.
“Yeah,” I said, and I kissed him.
Two minutes later we left an office that looked like it had been vandalised, and I followed Matthew out past The Menopausal Monster and back to work.
Chapter Nineteen
Just fucked was not the right way to be when you’re being drilled on anesthetics in theatre so I made myself focus on propofol and sevoflurane and tried to remember not to lean against anything and contaminate it.
When I looked down, Nevins and Lin were holding hands behind their backs, acting innocent, and it was so sweet that I couldn’t help but smile.
“You!” the anesthetist said, pointing at me. “Tell me about why isoflurane has been phased out.”
That would serve me right for letting my attention wander, wouldn’t it?
“Isoflurane is pungent and can irritate the respiratory system, so is rarely used in Britain. But, in Third World countries, it’s still the inhaled anesthetic of choice because the patent on it has lapsed so it’s the most economical of the halogenated ethers.”
He moved his attention to Nevins and said, “Ether isn’t patented either. Why don’t we use ether?”
“Because it’s flammable,” Nevins said. “And that can’t be a good thing.”
The anesthetist chuckled. “It can’t, you’re right. Now, you’re going to be expected to handle a diathermy machine, too. Let’s move onto that.”
Dr. M wasn’t in the staff room we used for tutorials when we wandered in, and it was a relief to be able to sit down and hold a cup of coffee stolen from the ward pantry in my hands for a while. Lin was running over her schizophrenia presentation, Nevins had his nose buried in our anesthetics text, everyone else was chatting or eating snacks.
I had the printouts from the librarian with me, but I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. I certainly couldn’t say anything intelligible about decubitus ulcers. It seemed pointless to waffle on about prevention since the hospital statistics indicated that almost all the patients with ulcers already had them when they arrived here.
Andrew pushed the door open and dropped his files and papers onto the desk. “Sorry I’m late, I was delayed in outpatients.”
He didn’t look at me at all but I felt my cheeks colouring a little anyway. He was late because he’d fucked me across his desk at lunchtime. On the pretext of collecting a book from him, which we had forgotten. Damn.
“Before we start presentations, I need to tell you all that I’ve been in touch with your course controller about your placements. I’m likely to be involved in industrial action in the near future, perhaps as soon as Monday. If I am, and the industrial action only involves one day of your placement, we’ll continue on the same as usual after that day. If the industrial action continues for longer than that, you’re to get in touch with your course controller and you’ll be reassigned to somewhere without Bolshie doctors.”
“Are you really going to strike?” Lin asked.
Dr. M shrugged. “Perhaps. We’ve got a stop work meeting at five. It’ll go to a vote then. Now, who’s first with today’s presentations?”
No one offered, of course, and he pointed at me and said,
“Blake? Let’s hear about decubitus ulcers.”
I talked until I was hopelessly over time with this but Dr. M didn’t stop me, he let me finish.
I was exhausted by then. I could feel sweat trickling down my back, and I couldn’t look at Andrew without remembering how we had been the night before. Fuck.
“How much of what actually happens here, on the wards, is evidence-based?” he asked the others. “Blake? Did you find that statistic during your adventures in Wonderland?”
I shook my head. Damn, I should have found that out.
“Medical mythology has it that ten to fifteen percent of what we actually do is evidence based, that is it is grounded in sound scientific process. You all probably want to write this down,” Dr. M said. “And put it somewhere you can see it everyday.”
There was silence while we scribbled, and Dr. M smiled at us all. “Actually, a mere fifty-one percent of all medical care flies in the face of science.”
“Why do we do it, then?” Lin asked, face creased with dismay.
Dr. M crinkled his eyes at Lin. “Because we can’t bear to leave the patient to suffer, so we try anything we can.
Because we’re talking about the human body, not a machine, and we don’t actually understand how it works. Because the way to provide scientific proof for the treatment is too hideous for an ethics committee to approve. Can any of you think of examples of treatment on this ward, right at this moment, where there is consensus it’s the right thing to do and there’s no scientific rationale for it?”
“Um,” I said. “There’s the man with the abscess on his leg that’s growing pseudomonas. He’s being treated with antibiotics that MCS said the bug was resistant to.”
Dr. M nodded. “Five grams of amoxicillin a day. That’s a toxic dose. There isn’t any reason why it should help, but his WBC this morning has dropped. He’ll eventually get better by himself, we’re just giving him a bit of a hand to get started.”
He checked his watch. “We’re out of time. I’m off to a stop work meeting. Haven’t been to one of these since I worked as a labourer. If you want to observe, you’re welcome to come along, too.”
Did I want to watch? Oh, yeah. It was another chance to watch Andrew being impassioned about something, and while it wasn’t quite as personally rewarding as watching him being impassioned about me, it would still be good.
Chapter Twenty
The last meeting had been full of drama and threats, but this one was calm. The collective will of the staff was palpable from the moment when F stood up, piece of paper in his hand, and said that he had been sacked, effective immediately.
There really wasn’t any need for any of the discussion after that, but we went through the process, making sure that the minutes included discussion of the ethical implications of our actions.
F looked subdued, and sober, and I could just about imagine how it was for him. I was an interloper, trained in the US, and I’d only been at the hospital for two years. F, on the other hand, had been there for ten years, apart from a sabbatical in Philadelphia for research. This was his home, for all its failings.
I’d prearranged with the BMA rep and the independent lawyer they’d brought in to the chair the meeting that
