Page 46 of Broken Heart Syndrome
She knew what was behind that door and she didn’t want him to see it.
His first instinct was that someone might have broken in and that she could be in danger going in alone. But after witnessing her reaction and how frantic she was for him to leave, he decided to let her keep her secrets for now, and not force anything before she was ready to trust him.
It was a mistake.
He should have pushed his way in, found out what she so desperately wanted to keep from him, and then made sure that she knew the way it was going to be between them. Since he left she hadn’t taken any of his calls, and had gone back to avoiding him completely. After what he’d told her on Saturday, and the level of attraction she obviously felt for him, her behaviour was bizarre. And he had decided once and for all that he was going to get to the bottom of it.
There were two people he needed to speak to and he’d tracked at least one of them down to the medical registrars’ room.
As he pushed open the door to the cramped room lined with computer screens he was assured yet again that his decision not to pursue a career in general medicine was the right one. There was no way the cardiology registrars would put up with this shoebox. Then again, there was no way they would put up with being the dogsbodies of the hospital like the medics did.
Any patient that didn’t slot into other specialties was dumped on the medics. They were called to all the arrests – in fact they were bleeped so often, and for such an array of random crap, that Tom wouldn’t be surprised if they were the first called when there was a problem with the hospital’s plumbing.
‘Lou,’ he called to her across the room. She looked up from her position perched on the edge of the desk next to a computer at which her boss (the Elderly Care consultant Richard Morris) was sitting.
Rich was a few years older than Tom. He was an okay guy but Tom had always thought there was something a bit off about him. Rich was staring up at Lou like he had just emerged from a vegan commune after twenty years and she was a full cooked breakfast. Lou had him dangling off her hook and she knew it. She was sitting close and giving him a great view of her long legs in that short skirt. Her head was thrown back and she was laughing. One of her hands was resting lightly on her throat, and the other on Rich’s forearm. He noticed that across from them Dylan was scowling fiercely at his computer, studiously ignoring them both, which was no easy task considering the close confines of the room.
This, Tom thought, is interesting.
‘Lou,’ he called again and she looked over to him, ‘can we talk a minute?’
‘Sure,’ she chirped, hiding her surprise and springing off the desk gracefully in her ridiculously high heels, which she appeared to wear as if she was in a pair of old comfortable running shoes.
As she sashayed over to him, he caught Rich with his eyes glued to her arse. Yup, Lou had him on her hook, no question.
He also noticed Dylan glowering in Rich’s direction and then finally casting a wary look over to Tom. Tom reckoned Dylan was sensible to be wary of him at the moment. Tom and Dylan were going to have words, and soon.
Lou smiled at him as she approached, and led him out of the room into the deserted corridor (this was an added shitty feature of the medics’ room: it was stuck at the very farthest corner of the hospital and was a pain in the backside to get to, making through traffic rare).
‘So, Weasel,’ she started, crossing her arms in front of her, ‘what’s crawled up your a-hole and died now?’
‘You have such a beautiful turn of phrase, Lou,’ Tom said through the small smile he was unable to hold back. Despite how annoying she was, there was no arguing that Lou was hilarious. He still didn’t know why she called him ‘Weasel’, but was just grateful that she didn’t do it in front of other people. ‘I need to talk to you about Frankie again.’
She sighed and dropped her hands to her sides, shaking her head. ‘I’ve told you everything that I feel comfortable telling you. I’m sorry but the rest you have to figure out for yourself.’
‘All you told me was to go for it. I’ve tried that, Lou, but she’s locked down tight and won’t give me any kind of an in. She just keeps going on about weird fucked-up rules of the universe making us impossible, and talking about herself like she’s some kind of second-class citizen.’
‘Bugger, I thought she had left all that behind,’ Lou muttered nonsensically.
‘Please give me something to go on, Lou,’ he pleaded.
Lou pulled in a breath through her nose and let it out slowly, closing her eyes. When she opened them she seemed to have come to some sort of decision. ‘Frankie had a difficult childhood …’
Tom’s body went very still and the atmosphere in the corridor changed as his mood darkened. ‘Did someone hurt her?’ he asked in a scary voice.
‘Well … yes.’ His body went rock solid and Lou, no doubt sensing that his head was about to explode, quickly continued. ‘Not in the way you might be thinking,’ she hurried on. ‘Her parents, being Italian, had a tendency towards high expressed emotion. You know, lots of screaming and arm-waving, nothing physical. But there were other …’ she paused and looked away from him for moment ‘… problems. Then her dad left when she was eleven. I think that must have knocked her confidence, and it definitely meant she had to take on a lot of responsibility in the home and in the restaurant her parents worked in. Then she started secondary school around the same time and things there were … difficult.’
‘How difficult?’ Tom asked. Being outgoing and a natural sportsman, Tom had sailed through school.
‘Hell,’ Lou said simply. ‘She was vulnerable when she started. Her dad had just left, she was super skinny and awkward, combined with being naturally shy. She didn’t have an eating disorder, just a growth spurt at ten where her body stretched out a bit too quickly without giving her the chance to put on the weight she needed.
‘Kids can smell blood and weakness, and they made her the target from the first day of school. Seven years of persecution later, Frankie emerged very much the worse for wear. It was mostly verbal, but occasionally spilled over into physical. Tom, I swear some of the things those kids did …’ Lou stopped for a moment and took in a sharp breath. She continued in a low voice, which vibrated with her anger. ‘I swear to God, if I could go back in time and get my hands on those sick little bastards, I’d rip them limb from limb.’
Tom was in no doubt that this was true. He’d seen how much Lou cared about Frankie, and he had personal experience of how fiercely protective she could be when it came to her.
‘Okay, so she was bullied. What else aren’t you telling me?’
‘Her last boyfriend was … not nice.’
