So I Met Alec Track

Part VII

Part VII

I know it had been a while, but was I *that* bad?

I exercise my "woman you just slept with" rights and call once a couple days after the fact, leaving a casual message.

Still nothing.

That gawd damn son of a bitch.

I have work to do. That's what I keep telling myself, "I have work to do." And I do, and I do it, mauling Special Collections in a blitzkrieg of research.

And if I have a few moments where a tear or two is shed or something is thrown against a wall or I'm scribbling terrible maudlin poetry, that's my business.

I'm deep in the throwing things stage when, ten days later, his number pops up on my cell. I stare at it as it rings a few times, and then throw it at the couch.

"Stew you bastard!"

And limp into my study, trying to maintain my state of high dudgeon. I let the anger set in and congeal into a hard mass, ignoring three more phone calls over the next two days. I don't pick up my voicemail.

That lasts until I open my front door to find him standing there, hands in the pockets of his jeans, an utterly sheepish expression on his face looking for all the world like a six foot, two inch boy apologizing for breaking a window with a baseball.

Damn it.

"Can I come in?"

I say nothing, struggling between hitting him and...I don't know what. He hunches his shoulders as if reading the former impulse.

"It was really shitty of me not to ring you earlier. I'm sorry."

"You think?"

He takes the hit. "Can we talk? Please?"

I sigh and hobble away from the door, shooing Pilot back into the bedroom and shutting the door after her. I turn to him, drumming my fingers against the wall.

"I'm sorry."

"You've said that." Nothing else is forthcoming so I continue, "Look, we're both busy, we both have our own lives, and understanding what you came out of in your last relationship I have just rolled with this little dance you are doing, but now I need to know. What the *hell*, Alec!"

He holds his hands out as if to fend off my temper. "I know you are angry and you have every right to be, but could we just sit down and talk about this?"

I sit on the chair catty-cornered to the couch where he sits, an end table between us. It my turn to glower as he rests his elbows on his knees and tries very hard to put his explanation rationally.

"You remember I told you a couple of weeks ago that I went to visit a friend, helped him with his roof?" I nod. "Well, that wasn't the entire truth. Mark, I've known him since residency actually, but that is beside the point." He shakes off the nervous blather. "Mark works for the GMC."

"General Medical...Commission?"

"Council."

"I could have said it was a truck."

He lets the bad joke pass with only a brief vexed look. "Mark advised through the mess I told you about, when my first team broke up. He helped me keep my job. So after you and I met for coffee and I realized I was interested in pursuing something with you, a former patient, no matter how briefly you were a patient, I did treat you, I went to talk to him. Which I paid for by helping him with this roof," he adds wryly.

"And what did he say?"

"Well, after asking me why I couldn't meet a girl in a pub like a normal bloke, he said we're in a fuzzy area. You were not my patient by choice and you did not reveal any personal information to me beyond the extent of your injuries. I did not mention that you said you were attending Greenwich," he scratches the back of his head guiltily as he sits back. "But if someone wanted to make trouble over it, they could."