The Party Crasher(71)

  “Something happened at work while you were in the States,” Joe says, and I see a flicker of pain deep in his eyes. “It wasn’t great. For a while I thought I was going to lose my job. Be struck off. Maybe even prosecuted.”

  “Prosecuted?” I echo, horrified. “But…but what…”

  “There was an incident at the hospital,” says Joe, in level tones, as though he’s explained this story quite a few times. “I came across a chief surgeon…” He hesitates. “Using.”

      “Using what?” I say dumbly, before I realize. “Oh. Right.”

  “He was injecting himself with drugs,” Joe clarifies. “Before operating. I was concerned, obviously, so I raised it with him. Privately.”

  “What did he do?” I ask nervously, and Joe’s face twists.

  “To my face, he told me how glad and relieved he was that I’d called him out. He took me out for a drink. Said I was a responsible young man, clapped me on the back.” There’s a long pause. “Then, two weeks later, he stitched me up. He reported me for prescribing drugs wrongly to a patient. Falsified the paperwork before I had a chance to prove my case. Encouraged the patient’s family to sue. Floated the word negligence around.” Joe’s voice tightens. “He tried to destroy me.”

  I stare at him, unable to move. My whole body is in shock. Someone did that to Joe?

  “I was powerless,” Joe continues after a pause. “And I fell into a spiral of panic. I wasn’t thinking straight. I was already knackered from working and studying, and my brain went into a kind of emergency shutdown.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I manage, my voice tangled.

  “Because I couldn’t tell anyone.” His dark eyes meet mine frankly. “I couldn’t, Effie. I couldn’t tell a soul. It was too big. Too catastrophic.”

  “Not even your mum?”

  “Especially not Mum.” His face twists again. “She’d helped me to get into medical school. I couldn’t tell her I was going to lose it all. Sometimes I thought I’d have to leave the country. I actually googled places I could live. I thought maybe Costa Rica.”

      “Costa Rica?” I give a weird half laugh, although what I really want to do is cry at the idea of Joe sitting alone, googling places to go and live in disgrace.

  “I know. I was all over the place. I was…not thinking properly at all.” He shakes his head as though ridding himself of old thoughts, then looks up. “And then, right in the middle of it all, you came back from San Francisco. You were happy. Your life was going well. I just couldn’t bear to tell you what a mess mine was. Hi, remember me, your doctor boyfriend, well, funny story about that…That’s why I sat in Nutworth, clinging onto the steering wheel, in a kind of frozen panic.”

  “But I would have helped!” I exclaim, breathing hard in agitation. “I would have helped! I would have done anything—”

  “Of course you would.” He looks at me with a kind of wry tenderness. “I knew that then. I knew you’d throw everything you had into supporting me, and I couldn’t stand it. What if I ended up in court? What if I ended up in the papers and you suffered some of my disgrace? I felt I didn’t deserve you. I felt…tainted.”

  “Tainted?” I echo in dismay, and Joe winces.

  “I was in a very bad place. For quite a long time.”

  “But…wait,” I say stupidly, as it suddenly occurs to me. “You’re still in a job. You’re Dr. Joe! What happened?”

  “I was lucky,” says Joe wryly. “The surgeon was spotted injecting himself again, by a pair of nursing staff. Because there were two of them, he couldn’t railroad them, and gradually it all came out. After a lot of meetings, I was cleared. But I was a wreck. I couldn’t relax, couldn’t sleep…. Luckily, a colleague spotted the signs and sent me off to get help. And now…” He gestures at himself. “Good as new. Almost. Actually, I think the whole experience helped me when the TV thing kicked off,” he adds. “I had perspective. Coping strategies.”

      No wonder Joe was a wreck. I feel a total wreck listening to all this, and it didn’t even happen to me. I sink down onto the wooden floor, trying to digest it all, and after a moment, Joe follows suit.

  I have a lot of questions I could ask, but there’s only one I really want to.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?” I say, trying not to sound as upset as I feel. “It’s been four years, Joe. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I know.” Joe squeezes his eyes shut briefly. “I should have done. But I felt so shit. So utterly shit. I knew what I’d done to you was unforgivable. And the more I got my head back to normal, the worse I felt about the way I’d treated you. I didn’t want you thinking I was asking for forgiveness. Or trying to get back into your life. I didn’t want to sound as if I was…asking for sympathy.”

  Asking for sympathy? After that ordeal? Only Joe Murran could be so hard on himself. It’s the secret of his success, but it’s the secret of his problems too.