and the flash of cameras. Another thing I hadn’t thought of.
There were doctors I didn’t recognise standing outside, all wearing their BMA membership cards outside their pockets or clipped around their necks. They must have been the BMA stalwarts, the divisional reps and board members. There was a smattering of nurses uniforms’ amidst the group of doctors that were massing in the courtyard, most wearing their RCN membership cards, presumably as a sign of support.
I handed Clarissa to Ghastly George and walked up to where a very forlorn F was standing with the BMA people. We hugged, and he said, “Really, this is all some terrible mistake. I don’t actually mind being buggered by the admin and fired. Probably not enjoying it as much as you would, though.”
I kissed him on the cheek. “We can’t all have your good luck,” I said. “Besides, what makes you think I’m a pillow biter?” Got to love the UK slang, so much more descriptive than ‘fucking homo’.
He laughed, and sounded much more like the F I knew.
“Honey,” he said, hugging me again and chuckling against my ear. “Your darling med student has left knee prints on the back of your legs.”
I’d miss him. I hugged him back.
“You’re cheerful for someone that’s unemployed,” I said.
He slapped me on my back and grinned, and there was too much twinkle in his eyes. He was either tanked, or employed, and he didn’t smell of booze.
“Smug bastard,” I said. I left him to the tender ministrations of a BMA lawyer and walked through the milling crowd of doctors to where Jane was standing with a group of nurses.
She hugged me, nearly scaring the living daylights out of me.
“I had no idea you were joining us,” I said. “No idea at all.”
“Show of support, sweetheart,” she said. “Thought I’d stand here with you until my shift starts. We all thought that.
The RCN wouldn’t approve any real industrial action, but there’s no reason why we can’t be here while we’re off duty.”
Somehow, the idea of Jane giving up her free time was even more amazing than her going on strike.
I kissed her cheek, and she went bright red and flapped her hands at me speechlessly.
Someone touched my elbow and pulled me aside, depriving me of the delight of seeing Jane with pink ears.
We stood quietly. It was more like a vigil than a strike. We had no placards, just the BMA banner fluttering in the gentle spring sunshine. No one shouted, or ranted. There wasn’t a bullhorn in sight.
I couldn’t bring myself to estimate how many doctors were there. Someone would count us, either from the BMA or the press, who were standing expectantly across the road, obviously hoping we’d behave like coal miners or dock workers, not very sad doctors.
People walked past, some of them staring at us, some of them avoiding our gaze as they walked through the hospital’s main doors.
One little old woman with a stick and a plastic shopping bag walked past us into the hospital and came back a few minutes later and gave a cup of coffee to one of the gynae residents whose name I didn’t know, before returning to the hospital. Hopefully she wasn’t going to be requiring medical attention.
F nudged me with his elbow and said, “Quack.”
Under the circumstances, it struck me as being extremely rude for him to be calling anyone here a quack, and my distaste must have shown because he said, “No, you idiot. Mamma Duck, here come your ducklings.”
Chapter Twenty Nine
Lin walked ahead of me up to Andrew, hugged him quickly and said, “Hello, Dr. M. We’ve come to join you.”
Andrew smiled at her, and he looked pleased. He hugged me in turn, and I had to remember not to kiss him, then he hugged Nevins and the girl with the Lancastrian accent
“Thank you for coming,” he said. “It means a lot.”
“Hi, Dr. Seagate,” I said, and he slapped me heartily.
“Good to see you. I don’t know any of your names, but you’re all Dr. Maynard’s students, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Lin said. “He told us what happened to you, Dr.
Seagate, and we went to the stop work meetings, too.”
“Aren’t you worried about the impact on your careers?”
Andrew asked Lin.
She shook her head, sending black hair flicking around her shoulders. Damn, her hair was down, she must be going all out to impress Nevins.
“No, Dr. M.,” she said. “I did some reading on the impact of the Irish strike of ’87 on the careers of the participants, and it seemed to have not made a difference. Our career path is only influenced by the support of our clinical referees to a very small extent. Seventy percent of the human resource employment decision-making is based on the applicant’s presentation at the first interview, with the rest primarily based on academic record. Clinical references do little other than prove that we worked in a particular hospital for a period of time. If we all just submitted blank letterhead samples from the hospitals, it would work just as well.”
“Oh,” Andrew said.
Lin looked around her. “Besides,” she said. “I’m sure if we encounter any of these doctors in clinical placements, they won’t hold our presence here against us.”
“You researched this?” Andrew asked.
Lin nodded. “Definitely. I research everything.”
As I found out when Nevins took me aside later on, scuffing his feet and looking embarrassed. “Blake,” he said.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” I said. “What’s up?”
“Do you know much about girls?” He was looking up at the hospital now, apparently fascinated by the grubby windows.
“Um, not really. I’m gay, Nevins, if you hadn’t noticed.
Why? What do you want to know?”
“I thought you might have, I dunno, been into girls before or something,” he muttered.
Time to confess, before Nevins expired from embarrassment. “Yeah, I had a couple of girlfriends in high school.”
He looked at me hopefully. “Did you have sex with them?”
“Sure, as often as I could persuade them to let me. Then I worked out guys were much more my style.”
“I’ve been reading. You know, trying to, um, work things out, and it’s nothing like the books say,” he said, actually daring to look at me. I felt sorry for the poor bloke; Lin presumably had been researching their sex life, too.
I led him further away from the crowd. “What do you want to know?”
“How long does it take for a woman to, um, orgasm?” he whispered.
“Depends,” I said. “One girl was on a hair trigger, just touch her and she went off. Another girl took hours, used to make my jaw ache every time. And we had to be somewhere completely private. I could never grab a quick shag in the loos with her. Does that help?”
He looked relieved and nodded. “And, um, was she very loud?” he asked, going pink again.
“Some people are loud, men as well as women, some are silent. Some you can hardly tell it’s happened. Loud is good,”
I said cheerfully. “Means you’re doing all the right things. You are using contraception, aren’t you?” I said, partly just from the sadistic pleasure of making Nevins colour even more.
He nodded. “Yeah, Rosanna’s doing that. Triphasil. But we’re using condoms for the first cycle, just to be sure.”
