Bonnie Sveen Fan, thank you for your review - I'm glad you're enjoying this so far. I was surprised by the name change, especially as there was no explanation, but at least it helped me think of a title! I think Cal will do everything he can to support Ethan.
Tanith Panic, I think Cal's mind probably spends a lot of time in the gutter - with mine! Cal and Ethan both failed their FCEM in the series, but that won't necessarily happen in this version of events. Thank you for your review. It really would be boring if it was just a chain of facts! I hope I'll manage to avoid that.
Thank you to Gingersnaps2507 and s1436229 for the follows and favourites.
Cal took Ethan's arm and helped him into one of the chairs lining the corridor. "Come on, Ethan. Deep breath in for me. You're going to be fine. I'm right here."
"I'm okay," gasped Ethan.
Cal put Ethan's hand on his chest. "Come on, Ethan. Breathe with me. In…. and out. In…. and out. You'll be fine, Ethan. It's the Critical Appraisal. All you've got to do is go into that room, sit down, and read a medical paper. You've been reading medical papers since you were at school. This exam is made for you. In fact, if they manage to come up with a paper you haven't read already, I'll be pretty amazed!"
Ethan's heart started to beat faster. "But what if I haven't read it?"
"Then you'll probably enjoy it even more," said Cal. "It won't make any difference to the results."
"But I haven't just got to read it," said Ethan unhappily. "I've got to answer questions on it too."
Cal put his hand on Ethan's shoulders. "And you'll answer them. Do you remember when we were looking through those past papers and you were highlighting all the things they might ask questions about and then we got to the end and you not only got all the answers right, you'd predicted every question?"
"That only happened once," said Ethan.
"Even once sounds pretty amazing to me!" Cal's voice was sincere. "You're good at this, Ethan, and you're going to ace this. I know you are."
Ethan smiled shakily. "I'll have to panic more often if it makes you this nice to me."
Cal laughed. "Yeah, it's my own personal Caleb Knight Emergency Treatment for nervous exam students. So here's some critical appraisal for you. What are the strengths of weakness of my new treatment?"
"Weaknesses: it's only been used on one person," said Ethan. "You would need a much larger sample in order to judge its effectiveness."
Cal smiled unwillingly. "Fair enough."
"Also, this isn't a medical emergency, so it's yet to be tested in emergency conditions."
"Details, Ethan. Mere details."
"It's the details that get you the marks, Caleb. Thirdly, the results have only been assessed by one person – you – and technically you haven't assessed anything yet."
"Give me a chance, Nibbles!"
"But the strength is…" Ethan smiled. "It works. I feel much better. And in this particular 'clinical' situation, that's the most important thing."
Ethan left the exam room to find Cal sitting on one of the chairs, waiting. "How did you get out before me?" A suspicion grew in Ethan's mind. "Cal, you didn't leave early, did you?"
"No. I stayed till the end. I was just a lot quicker than you about getting my stuff together and getting out of there," said Cal reassuringly.
Ethan smiled weakly. "I suppose I do faff about a bit."
"Just a bit!" said Cal. He smiled at Ethan. "But I'm glad you took your time because I wanted to be sitting here waiting for you. I know I'm not as pretty as Taylor, but maybe I'm better than no-one?"
Ethan's eyes were filling with tears. "Much better than no-one. Better than Taylor too actually. I'm sorry: I don't know what's wrong with me."
Cal stood up and put his arm around him. "Come on. Let's go and get some lunch. My treat." He gave Ethan a couple of minutes to compose himself. "So how did the exam go?"
"Okay, I think," said Ethan. "That published paper didn't have much relevance to emergency medicine, though, did it?"
Cal looked a bit worried. "Didn't it?"
"The subjects weren't actually patients in an emergency department," said Ethan. "Although a lot of people with their condition do present at an ED, it's difficult to judge the value of the results with regard to an ED because they weren't collated under emergency conditions. That was the main weakness, I thought."
"Oh," said Cal. He looked worried. "Should I have written that? I thought the main weakness was not knowing how good the anaesthetist was."
Ethan felt worried too, but he did his best to hide it. "The grade of the anaesthetist is certainly relevant – though the advantage of a trainee anaesthetist is that they would be supervised and that would mean two assessors rather than the implied one, which was another of my concerns."
"Yeah, I did get that one," said Cal, looking relieved.
"But there were more right answers than there were marks available," said Ethan. "I wouldn't worry. Really."
There was no point in worrying about the exams that had already gone.
"Ethan, have you got the post?" asked Cal.
Ethan nodded. "I left it on the table. I didn't really look through it, but it looks like it's mostly for you. There are a couple of parcels too: probably some rubbish you've sent off for. And lots of travel brochures."
"Yeah: I thought we might go away somewhere to celebrate," said Cal.
Ethan knew his holiday tastes were wildly different from Cal's and the matter of passing was still a big If – the pass rate was under 50% and in his heart of hearts, Ethan knew Cal would be lucky to get a first-time pass – but he found he liked the idea all the same, as long as Cal wasn't going to be drunk all night and hungover all day. "Let's wait and see if we both pass first. We have only done one exam so far!"
"We'd need to go very soon," said Cal. "I'm sure Connie wouldn't want to let two consultants go on holiday at the same time."
"Cal, passing the exam won't be enough to make us consultants," said Ethan. "We'd have to wait for a consultant post to become available."
"Yeah, I know that," said Cal. "But I'm sure it's only a matter of time. Dylan's been really struggling: it wouldn't surprise me if he quit. Or maybe Zoe and Max will get married and go off into the sunset."
"And when a consultant post does come up, we have no divine right to it," went on Ethan, as though Cal hadn't spoken. "First we'd have to apply for it; then we'd have to get it… and only one of us would. The other one would have to wait till the next one comes along."
"Unless we leave the hospital," said Cal. "Which actually might not be a bad idea for you."
Ethan was hurt. "Caleb, I can assure you I'm not going to get out of your way to give you a clear run at any consultant jobs that might come up."
"I didn't expect you to." Cal looked slightly annoyed. "What I actually meant is that it might be a good idea for you to get away from the places where you have memories of Taylor." He rubbed Ethan's arm. "I know you still think of her."
"Of course I think about her. I loved her," said Ethan in a low voice. "And she loved me too and I betrayed her. I'm not going to get over that all at once."
Cal shook his head. "You didn't betray her, Ethan. She betrayed you. She pretended to be something she wasn't and then she took your money."
"She returned my money," said Ethan. "And then I called the police and led her right to them." He buried his head in his hands.
Cal looked at Ethan worriedly. "Ethan. I know you're still upset. I get that. I'd be upset too – though (no offence, Nibbles), I don't think she'd have fooled me for a minute. I can tell when women are lying."
Ethan gave a weak smile. He actually had a feeling Taylor would have fooled Cal without too much trouble. Cal tended to believe anything a pretty girl told him, especially if it involved flattery – and Taylor was very good at flattery.
Later on, of course, as Taylor's feelings for Ethan had deepened, the flattery had become real, but in the beginning, it must have been fake. Yet it had been so convincing. Even though Ethan had known it was impossible that a beautiful girl like Taylor could really fall for a geek like him, he had been taken in.
And then she had really fallen for him…
"But anyway, we've got our Clinical SAQ today," said Cal. "After the exam, we can come back here and talk about Taylor for the rest of the day and half the night if you want to, but you can't think about her now. This is too important. You can't let her mess this up for you. If she does love you, she won't want you to mess it up and if she doesn't love you, she's not worth it."
"Yes.. yes, you're right," said Ethan softly as he tried to blink tears away. "I'm okay really. I just… can you give me a minute, please?"
"I'll go and open my post," said Cal, and patted Ethan on the shoulder. He went over to the table while Ethan wiped his eyes and tried to control his emotions. He was usually quite good at that. He saw upsetting situations at work every day and he didn't cry as often as Cal.
But this was different. Taylor had broken his heart – and then he'd broken hers.
Cal was right, though. This exam was very important and Ethan really wanted to pass it first time. He passed everything first time and although the FCEM was notoriously difficult, he didn't want it to be the exception.
Ethan put his glasses back on in time to see Cal sliding an envelope into his pocket. "What have you got there, Cal? A love letter?"
Cal jumped and gave Ethan a wary look. "That's right," he said. "It's all mine and you're not looking at it."
"I don't want to look at it!" said Ethan. "Not if it's anything like the 'love letters' you usually get."
"Trust me, Ethan," said Cal uncomfortably. "This is really not the kind of thing you want to be reading at all."
"I believe you," said Ethan with feeling. "Do you think you'll reply to her?"
"Reply to her?" Cal looked as though the possibility hadn't even crossed his mind. "No. Of course not. She's in the past, Ethan. Just because she can't let go of me, it doesn't mean I can't let go of her."
