A DARK FALL: The Published Edition

One

For the entire drive home, my mind relives the events in HD. What if I weren't around? Would he have bled to death on the street? Do I care? Why the hell didn't he go to a hospital? The reasons I come up with make me feel uneasy and out of my depth, as though I've been involved in something unwholesome.

At some point between getting off the A23 and reaching Shere, I decide not to mention it to the other doctors in the morning. Whether it's the threat from the aggressive one or something else, I'm not sure, but since I don't know who they are or what happened, there isn't a whole lot to tell anyway. If anyone asks whether I happened to treat a bleeding man at my drop-in, then of course I won't lie, but I also won't be sending out a group email either.

As my mind flits back to the memory of the attractive one I sewed back together and how he looked at me, I start to feel warmer. I reach out and turn the blower down to the coldest end. Try to think about a glass of wine instead.

It's just before 10:00 p.m. when I get home, and Fred starts meowing hungrily at me as soon as I walk through the front door.

"I'm sorry I'm so late, baby. Are you the hungriest cat in the world? Aw, I bet you are. Mummy is sorry." I pick him up to kiss him on the nose as I stroke his tortoiseshell fur.

The moment I put him down, he bounds enthusiastically into the kitchen to purr against the cupboard that stores his food.

I feed Fred too much before going to the fridge to see what I can salvage for myself. There are a few slices of leftover chicken on a covered plate from yesterday, which I uncover and start to nibble on before pouring myself a cold glass of chardonnay. Then I stick the empty plate in the dishwasher before going upstairs to run a bubble bath. There's little chance of me sleeping tonight without the aid of wet heat and wine, and by the time I climb out of the bath an hour later, my eyes are heavy and my bones languid and soft.

Boiled, pink, and too hot, I crawl under the duvet as Fred jumps up, stretches out, and curls himself into a tight little furball at my feet. My eyes close almost instantly after I switch out the light, but before my consciousness fades, an image of a hard, tattooed body, green eyes, and full, kissable lips floats across my mind.

***

The rest of the week is truly remarkable in its banality. So banal it begins to feel as if I imagined the whole episode on Tuesday night. Maybe it never actually happened, and I invented it purely to add some excitement into my life. Which wouldn't be unreasonable since excitement is something my life distinctly lacks at the moment. No one mentions a local knife attack, and no policemen turn up at the surgery asking any questions about it either, which makes it far easier to stick to my decision not to mention it to anyone.

I say "easier" when, actually, I feel heavy from it, guilty even, as though I've committed some terrible crime and I'm going back to the scene of it over and over again.

Exactly a week after my run-in with my dangerously attractive patient, Sam asks me out. I get the sense it's something he's been working up to. It has the feel of something practiced about it. Sam's adorable—one of those genuinely nice guys. As well as being cute, smart, and a doctor, he also has a lot in common with me. We're a perfect fit. So I wonder why I'm not more excited by the prospect of going out with him. Maybe it's the fact we work together. It's never a good idea to mix the two, but how else do you meet prospective partners if not at work? Certainly not in nightclubs or bars, where everything is a line or a come-on for the sole purpose of getting you into bed.

At the end of another monotonous week, the weekend finally arrives, and with it, the first night out with the girls in a while. I'm mainly a hermit homebody these days, but this is a chance to catch up with Robyn's hen-night girls before her wedding. We've also managed to swag invites to the opening night of a new "nameless" club in town via my brother.