board has been clear. A monthlong job share with the other top applicant is the working plan at this point. A decision will be made as to who gets the post in the New Year. It’s nothing to do with your ability. Just the usual politics.”
“Politics.”
The word hung between them like a noose.
Unbelievable. He’d put in the hours, the graft, the blood and the sweat. Maybe not the tears, but if he was going to come back to London for good this job and this hospital were the only reasons why.
Again his gaze drifted to the busy A&E. His pulse elevated just looking at the packed waiting room. He’d far rather be out there doing a fourteen-hour shift than standing in here talking about a job share.
Maybe “they” had a point. The management post he was trying to snag involved a lot of paperwork. And even more politics.
Something in him softened. This couldn’t be easy for Dr. Menzies. He narrowed his gaze, acutely aware that his mentor had aged considerably since they’d last worked together some ten years ago. Right before his first deployment.
Matthew looked him in the eye. “Since when are we back to Dr. Chase?”
The question had the desired effect. The tension in the room went down a few notches and the atmosphere became not exactly friendly, but closer to how they’d been way back in the good ol’ days at the teaching hospital. When learning had been learning, work had been work, and when your boss offered you a job you got it. Not had it swung in front of you like a carrot, only to have it given to another rabbit.
“So...is this how I should look forward to things working here at Bankside? Fluidly?”
To his credit, Dr. Menzies chuckled. The man had been more of a mentor to Matthew than his father ever had. A sting of remorse shot through him. Not that he could blame his father. Grief did strange things to a person. Especially when your one living son had done the single solitary thing he’d begged him never to do. Joined the military.
“Now, Matthew, let’s not get carried away, shall we?”
“Why not?” He leaned against the doorframe of his mentor’s office, having never bothered sitting down. “Yesterday I was under the impression I’d be taking over the A&E unit in a few days’ time and today it’s a job share. I don’t know if I need my ears cleaned, but let’s see if I can remember correctly.” He tapped his chin in a faux display of trying to remember the moment. “Matthew,” he mimicked, expertly but not unkindly, “having you as Director of A&E would be like—”
“Butter on bread,” Dr. Menzies finished for him with a shake of the head. “Look. I’m sorry, Matthew, but this one is out of my hands. You know I’d have you running the A&E this very second if I could, but...” He hesitated and looked away as he spoke on. “If we’re going to carry this simile on further let’s just say the candidate they have in mind would be the...er...marmalade.”
“The marmalade? I’m the butter and this other mysterious candidate is the bloody marmalade?”
Matthew squared up to his boss—grateful there was a desk between them. Never in his life would he dream of laying a finger on him—or anyone, for that matter—but this was news. He wasn’t here to quibble over butter vs. tangy toast toppings.
He might as well have stayed in Iraq if he’d wanted things to be straightforward. Wake up. Survive. Sleep. Repeat.
He’d come back to London to work. Help patients. Make sure the SoS wing opened. Maybe process a few of his own demons while he was at it. But mostly to work. When he worked there wasn’t a thought in his head other than doing the best he could for the patient he was with.
Dr. Menzies rose from his chair and walked round and perched on the edge of his desk. “I know this isn’t what you wanted. What either of us wanted,” he hastily corrected himself, “but this other candidate has got a helluva lot of experience.”
“I have a helluva lot of experience.”
He silently ticked off the countless years of medical school, the military training, working in combat conditions. Turning his father’s plastics factory into an award-winning center for prosthetics. Getting a knighthood for turning the bulk of the profits into a charity for soldiers trying to reintegrate themselves into society. What more did the world expect him to give before he’d proved himself?
“Who is he?”
“Actually...Matthew...he’s a she.”
* * *
“Job share?” Amanda’s cheeks, pink from the icy walk to the hospital, turned hot and her eyes widened as the A&E department’s PA raised her hands in a don’t-shoot-the-messenger gesture.
“From the look on your face, I am guessing our beloved Dr. Menzies didn’t make that clear? Hot tea? It’s freezing out there. Or gingerbread?”
She pushed a plate of decorated ginger biscuits—stars, bells, Santas and something she couldn’t identify—across her desk and rolled her eyes.
“My mum’s on a mission this year to be the Christmas biscuit champion of her WI group. The weird one is a submarine. My dad.” She offered as a means of explanation.
Amanda accepted a star-shaped biscuit with a smile, her eyes flicking to the PA’s nameplate: Deena Stokes. She looked no-nonsense enough, even with her nails decorated like Christmas tree baubles. She also looked as if this wasn’t the first time she had delivered unwelcome news to someone who should already have been in the loop.
Her dry tone intimated a certain world-weariness with her boss and his lack of communication, but her body language spoke volumes, too. She was the gatekeeper to the director’s domain—and right now the drawbridge wasn’t anywhere near close to landing on the other side of the moat. So it was suck it up and take a biscuit or...
“Your mum’s in with a good shot if these are anything to go by.”
Amanda lifted the half-eaten cookie as evidence, though with her nerves jangling round her like elves on hyperdrive even the finest pastries in the universe would taste like cardboard.
She looked toward the closed office door and tilted her head back to Deena. “I’ve not met with him yet. I’ve only had meetings with the board.”
Amanda shook her head in disbelief and finished her biscuit. You had to laugh, didn’t you? Just when she’d thought she’d had all her ducks lined up in a row...
“I’d been under the impression this meeting was just a formality. That the job was already mine.”
Deena quirked an inquisitive eyebrow.
Humph! Looked as if someone knew better than to assume anything.
Rookie error. Amanda silently chastised herself for going soft in her time off from “the big leagues.” If you could call raising a child and taking every locum shift in every inner city A&E on offer time off.
She shrugged away the thought. She had her Auntie Flo. And an entire floor of Flo’s big old tumbledown four-story house right in the center of one of London’s smartest neighborhoods. It might look like the hands of time had not moved since the first Wakehurst had set
