Mr. Park Lane (The Mister)

For a moment I wondered how much Felicity, my boss back in Yemen, had talked about me to Gerry. She’d tried to encourage me back to London for months before I broke my leg. Told me I needed to date, take up knitting, work somewhere a siege wasn’t imminent. She’d told me it would do me good to go home. But I loved what I did over there. I was really helping people, and it was so busy the weeks and months just flew by. When I broke my leg, I had to leave. I was a burden if I couldn’t work, just taking up a bed and food. So I was forced back here. It wasn’t a choice I’d have made willingly.

“I like to be busy,” I said. “And I have loads of energy. I suppose I’m just lucky like that.”

“You need rest.” Gerry’s face was stern, like an overbearing Victorian schoolmaster. “That doesn’t mean lying on the sofa watching God-knows-what on the Netpix. It means time away from the hospital spent engaging in meaningful activities that bring you joy. It means caring for yourself, investing in the people in your life, and creating a life outside the hospital.”

Gerry sounded a lot like Felicity. I guess it wasn’t surprising—Felicity had worked with him and recommended me for the position. But I couldn’t help wondering whether she’d warned him about me.

“I tell everyone who works with me the same thing,” Gerry continued. “How much you heed my advice will reflect in your appraisals. I’ll expect you to report to me every two weeks with what you’ve been doing outside of work, as well as what’s been going on in the hospital.”

He couldn’t be serious. I mean, people talked about balance and self-care, but as long as I was being a good doctor, what did it matter?

“During your time with me, I want you to become not a good doctor, but a great one. And you can’t do that if you’re always working. It sounds counterintuitive, but you have to trust me on this. You can’t be great if you don’t give your mind and body time to recuperate from the intensity of your work.”

I could see Joshua nodding out of the corner of my eye. He was a bloody gazillionaire. There was no way that happened by taking every Friday off.

“Space for thinking and time to let your mind expand is the only way to be truly successful,” Joshua said. I tried not to roll my eyes.

“I’m so pleased Hartford has got someone to encourage her down this path.” Gerry nodded to me. “Think on what I’ve said. We’ll talk again soon. Like I said, I’ll expect updates every two weeks starting at the end of next week.” He glanced at Joshua. “You’re going to have to watch her for me. Excuse me. I’m just going to help out Margo.”

I pulled my face into a smile as Gerry turned on his heel and left.

“So thanks for taking my side,” I said under my breath.

“Sounded to me like we were all on the same side—yours. He’s trying to help. So am I.”

Of course Joshua wouldn’t get it. I enjoyed being busy. I didn’t want to veg out on the sofa and watch cooking shows.

“Were you always this . . .” He narrowed his eyes as he looked at me and . . . I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t tear my eyes from the flecks of gold sprinkled across the blue of his irises, the sweep of his eyelashes, the strong, raw jut of his chin.

He didn’t finish his sentence so I did it for him. “Stubborn? Opinionated?”

“I wasn’t going to say either of those things.” He pushed his hands into his pockets in a way I’d seen him do a thousand times. “But your boss is telling you what he wants from you. He’s giving you a roadmap to impressing him. I thought that was your aim?”

He was right but it didn’t make him less irritating. I didn’t want a hobby. Cut me in half and I was medicine all the way through. “How would you like it if someone said you had to change the way you were at a fundamental level and work for the rest of your life behind a desk, doing data entry?”

He had a funny habit of pausing before he spoke. I couldn’t decide if he was trying to draw things out to torture me or he was thinking about what he was going to say. Either way, it made me want to fill the silence. “I’d do it if that’s what it took to have the career I wanted,” he said.

Urgh. When he put it like that, it sounded so obvious. It wasn’t so easy for me, though. I didn’t know what I would do if I wasn’t working.