Divorced! Now what?
Chapter 37

Theo POV

Today was a 'clearing day'. Well, that is what I call it. After arriving at work, I headed to the cafeteria to grab coffee and then to Robson's office. On Tuesdays, we normally discuss some patients we have on waiting lists, if anything new has arrived, and if we consider those on waiting lists for a new heart that needs shuffling around. The list is growing, and some are worse than others. It still boils down to compatibility. But the hospital has been lucky so far. Only two patients are in the too-hard basket; their blood type is rare, so replaceing a donor is harder. Nurses and junior doctors greeted me as I walked with a tray consisting of three coffees and three muffins. I have my fingers crossed that Bethany will be in Robson's office when I get there. The nurses say they had seen her arrive around seven thirty, a little early, but okay. She might be keen to start in her research lab.

Using my foot, I knocked on the door and heard him say, 'Enter' I used my elbow to push the door handle down and my b**t to make it open and turn. The relief of seeing Bethany in his office was more than I would like to admit. It is not like I had not seen her yesterday.

Is this what my sisters were trying to tell me about having a boyfriend and wanting to see them all the time? I thought it was all fanciful, having never been married, and the one girl that I had considered a possibility when I was still in med school proved to be a two-timing...... Yeah. I had a girlfriend once. She thought about it when I was working on the night shift, which I had little chance of avoiding in my early years of training. She thought about going out and partying. At first, I thought it was with her girlfriends, as she led me to believe, but I showed up at one of those parties, having been invited, without her knowing. I wanted to surprise her, so I had a ring picked up and everything, but when I arrived at the party and asked a few questions about where she was, I was guided upstairs.

I felt my stomach plummet because that usually meant not being alone, but I trusted my girl and walked up to the room he mentioned, only to replace her moaning and groaning, with her head between some guy's legs. He was leaning back, his eyes closed, and had a face of enjoyment. I closed the door, walked back downstairs, and had a few drinks, wishing the guy a happy birthday. When my girlfriend came down the stairs, hand in hand with the guy and both having a huge smile on their faces, I was sad and livid, and a lot of other feelings rolled into one. They greeted people and walked around the room as a couple until they reached where I was standing with the birthday man. One look at me, and her face paled. I was sure she was going to cry, but I put my drink down and left the party. She had seen me, and that was all that needed to be done. I changed the locks on my apartment doors, and anything that she owned was boxed up and left out for her to collect. I did not care if it went missing or not. I have not had a steady girlfriend since. I had a few hook-ups, and one girl made it to a month of dates before she started to look a little clingy, so I stopped going out or dating and took a few one-night stands to help with my needs. I did not like clingy girls, not anymore. I lost a lot of trust over the years. I knew men could be bad, from what my sisters went through and mum's work at the woman's refuge, but my experience had made me jaded, and none had cracked my walls until now. The meeting in Robson's office was shorter than usual. We had no new people on the waiting list for a heart, and Robson was eager for Bethany to get started and make more hearts. She was experimenting with a new compound, one she believed would be less likely to be rejected by the recipient. From what I understand, she had two hearts to go now, but with the old compound, the same that was in the pig and still going strong. Robson was keen to get one of the men on the list to try the heart. The man in question was told about the experimental heart and was interested in giving it a go. He was not going to last much longer. If Bethany agreed that the man could have a new heart in less than a week, Bethany would like the fellow to be there in the hospital, isolated from germs and on a drip for something she would not tell me about but said it helped reduce the rejection.

After more pushing by Robson, Bethany agreed and suggested they get some contracts together for her side of the heart patent and also something for the patient so they could not be sued if it was unsuccessful.

Bethany left to go to her section and get started on getting the heart ready for the patient and for Robson to do his part. I was keen and offered to join her in the theater to assist. I wanted to see this heart in action, and I wanted to watch her, too. To me, she was a genius in the theater.

The rest of my day was spent doing a couple of ward rounds, checking up on our patients, updating the records, and reading through some reports on other people wanting to come to the private hospital for treatment. I knew our hospital was not cheap, and we had very few that were public patients. Those lucky public patients were there because they had a generous benefactor who paid for most of the costs involved, and we absorbed the rest. It looked good on paper to show we had helped out some of the less fortunate and a reasonable tax deduction for the hospital.

One idea I was toying with was marketing the new heart. If this patient survives the surgery and manages not to reject the mechanical heart immediately, we might promote it as a possibility for those in bad shape. The fact that the pig is living an everyday life, well, typical for a pig, after five or more years, is a good promotion angle. After we see how this goes, I will have to bring this up with Robson and Bethany. We are getting some more animals in the research section, some pigs and a monkey, all with heart issues, so Bethany can put her new compound in a body and see how it goes. The monkey was courtesy of the local zoo. They realized that it was struggling and asked if we could take it out of their hands. This monkey would be a marketing tool, too, if the operation and the new compound were successful. Again, Bethany's vet skills came in handy, answering all the questions about doctors playing vets, when she is a rare breed that is both.

There was a lot at stake at this experimental stage. One heart we know is working and has already attracted interest from the medical field. One of the few hearts is still working after all this time, and Bethany refused to give too much away about how it worked. The day was almost done for me. I was hoping to catch up with Bethany, but it has been hard to see her so far, as she is locked away in her research lab, and I do not have clearance to enter the sterile section. Plus, it would be a pain in the butt to get cleaned up to enter it in the first place.

One of the nurses cornered me again. She said there was a new patient in the room, and I had not heard of any new patients, so I entered the room. One may have come, but I had yet to be informed about it, which was odd. Once in the room, she pushed the door closed behind me and tried to rub herself against me.

I was grossed out.

'You and I would make a great couple. How about you having a little taste in here while it is quiet?' she purred at me, grabbing my hair and trying to pull my face to hers.

I pushed her away with a little more force than I had intended and moved to the side. I did not answer her; I just walked out of the door, feeling dirty from the whole event. I passed a few nurses who gave me a weird look. Then, behind me, I stopped at the nurse's station and looked at the door I had just come out of; Tina was pretending to adjust herself to make it look like something had happened.

I took deep, calming breathes as I watched Tina, and as she reached me, I said,

'To Robson's office now!'

I dragged her to his office, knocked, remembering my manners at the last moment, and entered, dragging her into the office with me. After explaining what happened and how I was not happy with that, I stormed out of his office, leaving her in there for him to deal with. What is it with some women? It is not the nurses in general I am complaining about, but if I did that to her, she would be shouting r**e, and I would be in big trouble, but they think it is okay to do it to men. I was seething and, for some reason, felt dirty and in need of a shower now.