‘After what you’ve just been through, I wish I could do more,’ he said. ‘How was the massage? Did my dad survive?’
I opened my mouth to tell him everything his father said, to let forth a torrent of rage and frustration. Then I looked up at the anxious smile on his face and Icouldn’t do it. How would it help? He already knew how his dad felt, there was no point in starting another argument. Better I took it on the chin and poured all my rage-y energy into Caroline’s performance as promised, even if the suspicion that Callum was destined to end up here, destined to end up with Shiv, hung around my shoulders like the world’s saddest weighted blanket.
‘When I became a doctor, I took an oath to do no harm,’ I said instead. ‘Today I fear I broke that oath.’
‘I can’t apologise enough.’ Callum pulled a penknife from his back pocket and sliced through the tape I was struggling to peel from the box of ornaments. ‘This is a start. If I can get into the kitchen without my parents having a heart attack at the sight of their son and heir in an apron, I owe you a sticky toffee pudding as well.’
‘If I didn’t give your dad a heart attack just now, he’ll survive anything,’ I replied, carefully opening the box and taking out one of the baubles. It was so delicate, something I would never buy for myself. I wouldn’t trust myself with it.
‘I’m surprised he didn’t keel over when you stood up without any trews on. It’s been a tough day for Derek, hasn’t it?’
‘I’m sure he’s had worse,’ I said as I stepped back to consider the tree, placing my ornament right in the centre with surgical precision.
‘I’m going to need a ladder to get to the top,’ I told Callum, admiring my handiwork.
‘No, you’re not.’
He bent down to pick up a sparkling silver star then reached up to place it right on top of the tree. ‘That’s what I’m here for.’
‘Knew you had to be good for something,’ I smiled,the fire from the logs crackling in the fireplace heating my face and something else, something unfamiliar but not at all unpleasant, warming me from within.
‘At the end of the night we had to clean out the fryers.’ With a happy, easy smile, Callum handed me another bauble for the tree. ‘You open the tap, drain out all the grease, close the tap, fill the fryer with baking soda and water then turn the fryer on. Cleans itself, simple.’
‘But?’
He grinned. ‘Remember, I’m exhausted. I’m working a morning shift in the bakery and the night shift in the restaurant, my head’s a shed, I hardly know my own name, let alone how to clean a fryer.’
Hanging the ornament, I winced at what was to come next. ‘Go on, how badly did you mess up?’
‘I forgot to close the tap after emptying the grease. Baking soda, water and grease are not a good combination. I dumped the cleaning stuff in the fryer, went off to do something else and when I came back ten minutes later, it looked like the kitchen was having a foam party. There I am, up to my knees in greasy, stinking foam, it’s already midnight and I’m supposed to be back at the bakery by three a.m.’
‘No!’ I cackled with laughter as I stood back to weigh up my placement. Hmm. Needed to go one branch to the left. ‘What did you do?’
‘Spent three hours hosing down the kitchen, mopping up my mess and sobbing to myself. Rolled straight into the bakery, stinking to high heaven and passed out five minutes later. My boss thought I was ill and took pity on me, I never bothered to correct him.’
‘That is brutal,’ I admitted. ‘I would’ve laid down in the middle of the foam and cried.’
‘Oh, I did. Around two a.m. I went delirious and started making foam angels. Still a mystery how I managed to get it all cleaned up.’
He poked around in the last box still full of ornaments, all the others strewn on the floor behind us, empty. Pulling out a small, plastic, glitter-coated cow, he held it up for my approval.
‘Perfect,’ I announced, holding out my hand.
‘I feel like I’m in the operating room with you,’ he said, passing it over. ‘Scalpel, retractor, miniature Highland cow.’
I confirmed with a very serious nod. ‘This is exactly the same. Only we didn’t scrub in so there’s every chance the tree is going to develop septic shock.’
‘What’s the coolest thing you’ve seen in your job?’ Callum plucked the cow from my fingers to assist when I reached for a high branch and missed.
‘Teamwork makes the dream work,’ I said and immediately wished I hadn’t. ‘What’s the coolest thing I’ve seen at work? Hmm. Off the top of my head—’
‘No pun intended.’
I replied to his cheesy smile with an eyeroll. ‘I don’t know, there are so many exciting developments at the minute. There was this one patient, you might’ve read about it, but they started remembering childhood memories during surgery, things they had totally forgotten. Now we’re conducting trials on deep brain stimulation, placing electrodes in the hypothalamus with the trajectory intentionally travelling through the fornix to see if it will help patients with Alzheimer’s.’
‘Wow.’ He stared at me as though I’d just told him Icould travel through time. ‘I understood about every fifth word of what you said but it sounds impressive.’
‘It’s pretty incredible,’ I agreed. ‘And I wasn’t there in person, it was before my time, but some of my colleagues were in the room when this incredible doctor removed a tumour from a violinist while she was playing the violin.’
