Page 92 of Crescendo

“Of course I have,” she snapped. “So many times. And all it does is end up with me hurting again.”

I chewed my lip. When I’d been trying so hard to put Callum away, I’d had a lot of conversations where I’d shut people down, where their takeaway had probably been that I couldn’t give a shit about them—or maybe even Callum. But it hadn’t been that. It was being overcome with pain and panic. It was being human and struggling to say what was on my mind—fora hundred, thousand reasons. None of which were an indication that I didn’t care about Callum or the person talking to me.

Maybe Hannah and Eliza were having a similar struggle.

“Eliza?”

“What?”

“This feeling, right now, isn’t going to go away by ignoring it. You and Hannah are both really hurting, and Iknowshe cares about you. But, sometimes, we’re really bad at explaining ourselves to the people we love. We shut down and run away, afraid. We try to protect ourselves and give the other person what we think they want, even if we don’t actually know what they want.”

“What’s your point?”

“That it might be worth talking to her again.” I paused as she sucked in an angry breath. “I know it’s not going to feel good right now—maybe it even feels impossible—but you don’t want to lose her over this. And the two of you have something too important to give up over a misunderstanding.”

She turned to look at me, not bothering to hide her flushed cheeks or salty tears. “You know you’re not on doctor duty right now, right?”

I laughed. “Yes?”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re just being nice, even after I insulted you and your girlfriend. And when everyone’s been saying you’re my real competition right now.”

I laughed again. “Well, everyone needs to let some steam off sometimes. I know and like Lydia more than enough for the both of us, so you don’t have to like her. And… you can be in competition with your friends. You just have to keep it healthy.” I hesitated, wondering whether she could handle the question. I hadn’t wanted everyone treating me with kid gloves, maybe she didn’t, either. “Besides, this whole time, you’ve been weirdly… protective of me. Can’t I be protective of you too?”

“I don’t need protecting,” she said quickly before pausing. “But, yeah, I guess you can. It’s not like I can stop you. Clearly.”

“Can I ask why?”

She shot me a sharp look. “You can ask whatever you want.”

I smiled. “Right, and you’re not required to answer. I am curious, though. Is it just because you’re worried about me going through the same thing you have with relationships?”

“Oh, is it just because we’re so similar I can see myself in you?” She asked it as if the concept was laughable, but I could see the ways we were similar—in search of technical perfection, hiding from our emotions in our work, both hiding parts of our pasts to protect ourselves—and I knew she could too.

“Well, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s this competition to get played in the Royal Albert Hall, and everyone else seems to have decided it’s going to be either me or you. So, yeah, maybe we’re not all that different after all.”

“Lydia’s having a terrible effect on you,” she said, but it didn’t sound as cutting as it might have, especially when she laughed. “Or is that just a doctor thing? Aren’t you lot known for having an ego?”

I laughed with her and it was nice, like the sound took some of the edge out of the room, out of the rejection she’d been feeling. “I suppose it does take a certain kind of person to believe they can save others, but we work hard for it. And I am good at my job, you know?”

“I know.” Her voice was so sincere that I couldn’t help but frown and study her questioningly. “Ugh, fine. When Hannah and I first moved down here, we ended up lodging with this eccentric PhD student from UCL.”

“Okay.” Small world, really. She’d been lodging with a student who went to the university my hospital was part of. I doubted they lived far from the uni, which meant they probablyhadn’t lived far from me. There were a lot of people in London, but there was every chance we’d passed each other in the street long before we met here.

She drooped down in her seat—probably the most I’d ever seen her slump. “The woman who lived on the ground floor of our building was old and she’d been ill. The student, he’d taken up helping out with things she needed, and, when we moved in, he asked if we could too. So, we did. She was sweet. She used to talk all about how her doctors saved her life. And, well, one night, we got home late and she caught us in the entryway. She needed someone to stay with her. She was having a rough night. Hannah was exhausted, so I sent her to bed and went to sit with the neighbour.”

I smiled at her. She was kinder than she liked to let on. I mean, she was also snappy and sarcastic, but people were complicated.

She sucked in a breath and looked at me very deliberately. “I held her hand as some flu ravaged her body and she tried so hard to sleep, and she told me a story about a doctor who’d sat with her through her first chemotherapy treatment. A young radiologist who’d been involved in diagnosing her cancer. A doctor who, when she was told she had to get chemo alongside the radiotherapy, saw how scared and alone she felt. One who insisted on staying after her shift to sit with someone getting chemo.”

My chest buzzed uncomfortably. A very small world indeed. “Right.”

She tilted her head, smiling slightly. “Edith Pennavale.”

Edith wasn’t the only one I’d done that for—people were scared, they needed someone, and I wanted to help, to be useful. I knew I needed to be with them. I’d take as many shifts as I could, and then I’d stay after sometimes, just to sit with people I didn’t want to be alone through a scary time in life.

They helped me, too. They were human connections when I tried to keep everything locked away. They gave me something productive to focus on, something I could understand and be useful with. I’d filled my mind with their names and stories just to feel like I was still living.

Edith wasn’t the first or the last, but she was the first case I’d had after completing my clinical radiologist training. It was that treatment that she must have been recovering from when Eliza met her, her immune system shot to pieces and picking up every virus that crossed her path.

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