He turned to me fully. His eyes smouldered. “Because you have no patience, Isla. I tried to tell you a week ago that I loved you, and you just cut me off. Like I wasn’t certain enough of my own mind to know that this,us–” he waved a hand between us – “and Teddy, is it for me. You sent me away, asked me to think it through, take you out of the equation. Regardless of whether we won today, I wanted to tell you again, rationally. Lay down my argument.” He waved the piece of paper. “And then today you just get to barrel in with your spur-of-the-moment ‘I love you’ like the rules don’t apply to you.”
“But I do love you.”
“I know you do. I knew it last week too, and it’s taken every ounce of my self-control to not break down your fucking door and beg you to admit it.” His hand was shaking as he ran it over his mouth. “Why do you get to toss it out there and mean it, when I’m not allowed the same?”
He was right. I’d never been secure enough to believe that he could want me. Love me. That was as much of a disservice to him as it was to me. “Then tell me now.”
His throat dipped. Then he nodded. Took a deep breath as he straightened his glasses and unfolded the piece of paper. “About what happened in Glasgow—”
“No.” I held my hand up. “You don’t need to tell me. I wasn’t even really mad about that. Obviously, I want you to open up to me, but it wasn’t fair of me to demand it, when we never even put a name to what we were. I wasn’t your girlfriend—”
“You’re more than that,” he interrupted.
My heart was a hummingbird as I said, “Relationships don’t happen all at once. They unfurl slowly, truths passed back and forth.”
“You gave me a lot of truths. More than I deserved.”
“If Cameron hadn’t told me first, would you have told me about your patient? The one who nearly died?”
His shoulders drew up. “I don’t know. Not for lack of trust, but because . . . I’m ashamed. I worried it would change the way you looked at me.”
I held still, knowing we were on a precipice. “Could we – could we maybe walk for this?”
“Of course,” he said, unbuckling his seatbelt. “Wait there.” He came around to my side of the SUV before I could get the door all the way open. He took my hand, helping me from the car.
We were a hundred metres down the beach before he spoke again. “The bit about me attacking my co-worker isn’t true.”
“I never thought it was.”
“Peter was a lazy piece of shit who deserved far worse than the slap on the wrist he received.”
“Peter. Your old boss?”
He nodded. We walked a little further before he said, “My surgery in Glasgow was different to Kinleith. Always busy. It was an inner-city GP surgery, it came with the territory. I loved that in the early days; it was exciting, as awful as that sounds. No two days were the same.” His hair tossed over his forehead as he stared out at the sea. “But over the last few years, things started to change. Our funding kept getting slashed, appointment times became shorter, and the paperwork increased. Some days were so tightly packed, I didn’t even have time to eat and drink, let alone think.”
“It was that bad?”
He nodded, looking out at the rolling waves. “We were exhausted – not just the staff, but the patients. Rightfully anxious and frustrated when the service wasn’t benefiting them the way that it should. And I was . . .stressed,” hespat the word out like an ugly confession. “Had always been stressed, if I’m being honest. I thought it was normal. My dad was the same, every day he’d come home from work agitated and dog-tired. He’d say, if you aren’t exhausted, you aren’t working hard enough. I think that sank in early, on a psychological level. The needto always be perfect. To be the hardest-working person in the room.”
I didn’t even realise I’d reached out to grasp his hand until his fingers threaded through mine and squeezed.
“I didn’t recognise it for what it was at first. The reason I’d avoid opening my email in the morning, because it was so overrun with more sick-note requests and test results than I could feasibly get to. Why some mornings I’d ride the Subway past my stop, just to avoid going into work a little longer. My colleagues were quitting around me, and I pitied them, you know, thought they were too weak to hack the job. Then I got a bad case of stomach flu and had to take a few weeks off, and I swear, I’ve never been that ill in my entire life.” His grip tightened, like he was about to admit to something shameful.
So, I said it for him. “Burnout?”
He nodded. “I didn’t even think it was a real thing, just something lazy people said.” His laugh was bitter. “I returned to work like nothing was wrong, all the while obsessing over how weak my dad would think I was if he knew. Until a few weeks later, a regular patient of mine came to see me. She had a history of substance abuse and was trying to get clean for her two kids. She was complaining about fatigue. Night sweats. I think I knew what her diagnosis was even then, but I ordered more tests to confirm – you can’t just assume.” He dropped my gaze, like he was ashamed. “Endocarditis. An infection that destroys the heart valves and we barely caught it in time. I found out a few days later she’d seenPeter twice while I was out sick with the same concerns. He was the most senior doctor in the entire practice. If anyone should have been able to diagnose her, it was him. And when I confronted him, want to guess what he said?” I shook my head, fear tightening my gut. “He said she was just a junkie, assumed she was lying to get prescription drugs. So yes, I backed a sixty-year-old man up against the wall and yelled in his face. But I barely laid a single finger on him.”
“What happened then?”
“I got a six-month suspension, barely left my bed for the majority of it. I decided to just quit once my suspension was over; I didn’t trust myself to face Peter. Of course, my dad found out – he hadn’t been diagnosed yet – and I ignored every single one of his offers to help me find a new position. Can you believe he even offered me Amy’s job?” he scoffed. “Once I could work again, I was pretty much blacklisted, so I took what I could, bouncing between locum positions around Glasgow. Until last autumn when Callum begged me to come home because Dad’s health was declining rapidly. I helped take care of him, until he died. Only then did I discover he’d found his own way to help me get my life on track, whether I wanted it or not.”
“You know he probably left you the surgery because he’s proud of you, right?”
“Maybe. Probably.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t even matter anymore. You helped me see that.”
“Me? How?”
“For weeks now you’ve dug your heels in every time I tried to help you, and it frustrated the shit out of me. It wasn’t until you yelled at me about the money that I really got it.” He turned to me. “You wanted to deal with Cameron yourself, and I took that from you – just like my dad did to me.”
