been sitting on his bed, flicking through a magazine, completely unaware that he had momentous news to share.
‘I checked UCAS today.’
She’d looked up, dropped the magazine. Sat up straight. ‘And?’
‘I got an unconditional offer.’
Her face had lit up and she’d screamed with delight, bouncing on his bed as if it was a trampoline before jumping off and throwing her arms around him. ‘That’s amazing!’
He’d held her tightly, inhaling the scent of her hair, trying to take in every detail about her. Knowing he had to tell her the next part. The difficult part.
‘It’s Edinburgh.’
He’d felt her freeze in his arms.
She’d pulled back to look at him, confused. ‘Edinburgh? I thought you applied to colleges here in London?’
‘I did. But Edinburgh’s the one to offer me a place. Remember we went up there on the train with Mum and Dad for that interview day?’
‘But I thought that you said it was too far away?’
‘I did, but...’ And then he’d felt a small surge of anger that he was having to defend this. ‘We can still see each other. It just won’t be as often as we’d like.’
‘No. It won’t be.’
He’d looked away. Not happy to see the look of hurt on her face. He didn’t enjoy seeing her sad. ‘We can make it work,’ he’d offered, hoping that they could.
They were so young to have fallen in love, and they were being thrown by this, and he hadn’t been sure what the best course of action would be to stop her from hurting.
After he’d left—after he’d spent his first term away—he’d felt their separation more keenly. When he’d spoken to her on the phone he’d been able to hear the pain in her voice. How much she’d missed him...how much he’d missed her.
But what could he have done about it? He’d been so busy! Inundated by assignments, lectures and placements, he’d known there was no chance of him travelling all the way back to London, and no way she could come up to him either, because he needed to work.
He’d hated listening to her cry as they said goodbye each time. He’d wanted to do something to ease her pain, to try and make it easier for her, but the distance between them had made it hard. Each phone call they’d shared had been another stab wound. He hadn’t been able to wrap his arms around her. He hadn’t been able to kiss her or stroke her hair the way he usually would when she was upset.
He’d begun to think about setting her free. About whether he was being cruel to continue with the relationship, knowing that she’d be waiting for him for years. Ellie had dreams of her own. How could she follow them if she was waiting for him? He hadn’t wanted to lose her. He hadn’t wanted to walk away. What if she met someone else? But he had felt it might be the kindest thing—even if it hurt them both in the short term.
He’d called her on the phone. ‘We need to talk.’
A heavy silence. ‘About what?’
‘About us,’ he’d said, quietly. ‘I don’t think this is working. I’ve thought about this long and hard, Ellie, and I think it’s best if we...’
‘If we what?’ Her voice had sounded timid.
‘If we just stay friends.’ It had broken his own heart to say it. To cut the cord. To let her go. But he had done it for her. So she could have a life.
‘Why?’
‘It’s impossible, what we’re doing. You’re just waiting for me, Ellie, and that’s wrong. You’re waiting for me to finish med school. And even after that I’ll have to work, and being a junior doctor is long hours and overtime, day and night shifts all rolled into one. We’d hardly see each other. And then I’d be working hard to get into a specialism, so you’d have to wait for me to finish that. I can’t leave you hanging on like this—it’s not fair.’
Each word had been like a scar on his heart. He’d loved Ellie so much! But he’d had to do it.
He couldn’t expect her to wait for him. They were going to be apart for five years! And they were both so young, with so much ahead of them. It had been wrong of him to think that they could do this.
Ellie had cried down the phone, begging and pleading with him to change his mind, and although it pained him to let her go, he’d known it was the right thing for her.
When the call had finally been over, he’d put his head in his hands and just felt exhausted. He’d loved Ellie—he really had. But she needed to live her life, too. Not waste it. And he’d wanted her to be happy. Short-term pain for long-term gain, and if at the end of five years he returned home and the spark was still there then maybe they could revisit what they both wanted.
That was what he’d genuinely thought.
But five years later he’d already met Jo. And she’d been a junior doctor, like him, and she’d understood the life and was going through the same thing, and they’d just clicked, and...
And now Ellie was back and he was in turmoil. His emotions were all over the place at just seeing her.
She still had that long, wavy black hair. It concealed her face now, as she concentrated on getting a butterfly needle into the crook of the baby’s arm.
‘Adjust the angle. A little lower. That’s it.’
The needle slid into position and she attached the vacutainers to get the required blood samples.
She had steady hands. That was good. And she’d found the vein first time, which was sometimes hard to do on babies because they were so small.
He watched her finish off and cover the needle entry point with a small wad of cotton wool that she taped into position. ‘Okay, get those sent off to Pathology as soon as you’ve filled in the patient details.’
Ellie gave him a brief smile and he watched her walk away to the desk. Why couldn’t he stop staring at her? Just having her there was remarkable, but he found himself wanting to be closer. To touch her. Make sure that she was real.
He’d made the right decision in leaving her years ago—he knew he had. There’d been no other choice.
That was years ago. Nothing you can do about it now except give her the best education you can.
She looked up, caught his eye, and he gave her a brief smile. Fate had thrown them back together again, and if that wasn’t some sort of sign that this was a chance for him to make amends then he didn’t know what was.
He’d set her free once. Now he would do so again. But this time when she left in a few weeks she would thank him.
