It couldn't go on, I couldn't stay with M_ when I was falling so desperately in love with Dr House Officer. It all came to a head, as these things usually do, at a completely inappropriate time.
M_ and I had been invited to my old house-mate's wedding, in Wales. We went down the night before, and neither of us could sleep. At 5am he asked me, 'what's wrong? Something isn't right - you need to tell me.'
'I don't love you any more. Not the way I should.'
'Do you want us to stay together?'
'No.'
And that was sort of that, bar the crying, the deciding we couldn't face a day of trying to be civil to eachother, and the drive back to Birmingham. M_ moved out as soon as we got back - to his friend-next-door's.
I ignored all the phonecalls that weekend, and just holed up in my bed. It was what I wanted, but I still felt tragic.
When I got back from work on Monday, the flat was empty. I mean, as in NOTHING was left except the bed and other furniture that belonged to the landlord, and my things. Everything else was gone. Things we had bought together, things I was renting (this was in the days of Radio Rentals, so the TV and video player), anything that wasn't definitely mine, it was gone.
M_ probably thought I'd rock up next door and make a big deal about it, but I didn't. I was too busy waiting for Dr House Officer to call to worry about stuff.
Every morning I'd head out to work, and M_ would be watching from his friend's window.
About a week later, Dr House Officer and I went to Canon Hill Park and spent the afternoon wandering around, then lazing on the grass, finally falling asleep. It was with him that I learned to love that smell of fresh boy-sweat. He was the first time I smelled it - at Handsworth Carnival and again that afternoon. Or maybe I'd never noticed it before because I hadn't cared so much. Whatever, we wandered back to my flat, me on a high of love-hormones and boy-pheromones.
I'd lost my key. We couldn't get in. Shit.
Well, there was one person who did have a key, and he was conveniently close by - next door in fact. So we moseyed on over to ask M_ to lend me a key. Which he did. Oh, I saw him clock Dr House Officer, but it really didn't surprise me, and he showed no signs that he was at that very minute turning into a complete psycho nightmare.
Over the next week, the strangest thing happened. Things began returning to the flat. Gradually it was being re-furnished. Still no alarm bells.
Then the next weekend Dr House Officer and I were in Pizza Express, and I saw M_ looking through the window at us from across the road. I thought it was pure chance, but when he didn't move, just carried on watching us, I pointed him out to Dr House Officer. He got up and went outside, but by that time, M_ had gone.
Roll forward to a Thursday night. A Thursday night like any other. I can't remember what me and Dr House Officer had done, probably been for a meal then the pub, but we had gone back to his house, were in bed, had been for a while, and were about to go to sleep. The doorbell rang, and Dr House Officer went to answer it.
'Where's Karen? I want to speak to her.' It was M_
'Look, she is here, but she doesn't want to speak to you.' Dr House Officer was right - not least because I was starkers.
'I know she's in here. You need to let me in. I've got an axe in the car.'
'You what! You're a fucking maniac! Just fuck off, ok?' And Dr House Officer slammed the door shut.
There then followed ten minutes of M_ banging on the door and shouting, while Dr House Officer instructed me to get dressed, get my stuff together, and packed his own bag. Then we ran out the back door, round to his car, and drove away, M_ still obliviously banging on his front door.
We went to his on-call room at the Accident Hospital. Dr House Officer would barely speak a word to me. I tried to say I was sorry, that I didn't know how he'd found us, that I'd sort it out. He wasn't interested, just told me to go to sleep. I couldn't, and eventually called a taxi about 2am. I went home and phoned my best friend, S_. I could see that M_'s car was back, but I still didn't click that he was probably well aware I was back. I didn't click until S_ got her boyfriend to bring her to pick me up. As I got in the car, M_ came running out going, 'who are you off with now, you tramp?!' and kicking his car.
I didn't sleep at all that night. I sat up with S_ and told her the whole sorry story. I knew, I just knew, that it was over with me and Dr House Officer, and that was killing me. He had been everything I had ever wanted - we'd been to see plays, to see bands; we liked the same sorts of music, the same books, everything. We'd even shared the same dream - we'd both wanted to work at the Acci because it was the very best, it was the hardest work, the most challenging workload, the most innovative treatments. Not everyone could cut it, and we'd both wanted that more than anything.
Next day I was a mess, couldn't stop crying. Everyone was astonished, because no-one (not even S_ until the night before) had known we were together, we'd kept it that secret. And now we weren't. Dr House Officer didn't contact me, and there was no way I would contact him. I was Senior I Burns, I still had my pride.
M_ apologised, but it was too late, I knew I couldn't live next door to him. I moved out a week later, leaving no forwarding address. I didn't hear from him until he contacted me on Facebook two years ago to apologise. It wasn't necessary - I blame myself and myself alone.
Dr House Officer contacted me about a month later when I was doing a weekend on-call. We had lunch together. I will never know what he wanted - there was a physio course on that weekend, and some of the physios came to join us after about ten minutes. He finished his food and left. Later that afternoon, I was suctioning a patient on MIU, and he came behind the curtains.
'I wanted to tell you... I wanted to say....'
I pulled my suction catheter out of the ET tube, it had a huge gob of browny yellow sputum on the end of it. I will remember that particular sputum gob for the rest of my life.
'...you're a really good physio, aren't you?'
I looked into his eyes. Then grabbed hold of the end of the catheter, sputum gob and all, and in a swift move pulled off my glove over it, held the whole package in the other hand and pulled off my other glove over the whole lot. Chucked it in the bin.
'Yeah, I'm not bad.'
He left. I screwed my eyes up, pulled off my apron and finally came out of the curtains.
One of the MIU nurses was waiting outside.
'You know that Dr House Officer who's just left?' she said.
'Yes,'
'Well,' she drew closer, confidentially. 'He was going out with one of the OTs, and her ex-boyfriend was only stalking them! Followed them home one night with a baseball bat, and totally wrecked his house!'
I drew myself up to my full height, standing on every last little bit of the meagre amount of dignity I had left. 'Actually, she was a physio, not an OT; it was an axe, not a baseball bat, and it never left the stalker's car. And the reason I know all of this is because I WAS that physiotherapist.'
As I write this I can still see her face, and the faces of the onlookers as I left the MIU.
I went on to win the Points Game, mainly by shagging a burns Registrar in a vain attempt to get Dr House Officer's attention, then being snogged by an anaesthetist who pretended he was a shoulder to cry on. I lost a stone in weight because I couldn't eat. Dr House Officer is now Dr Consultant Anaesthetist. I still think I should be the mother of his two children, but hey, if he thinks of me at all it is as just the girl who was too much trouble cos she had a crazy stalker ex. PIG. ;-)
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