"Chloe?" Her mum asked at work.
"Not now mum, I'm working!"
"Chloe please, talk to me sweetheart"
"Like the time you talked to me about my brother." She hissed and walked off into the lift before her mother had time to reply.
Evan has told her to stay away from her mum and Dom. She was still angry at her mother for not telling her about Dom. She did her deep breathing in the lift, placed on her smile, and walked onto the ward. Her old friend back at school, Eilidh, who was good with words and metaphors used to say Chloe was a duck. All calm and happy on the outside, above the water but anxious on the inside like a duck treading water, legs going nineteen to the dozen. No one other than Fi, Eilidh and Sophie knew about her anxiety, she was good at hiding it. At the start anyway. When it got worse everyone knew. When she would run out of lessons, not always been in school, constantly in the pastoral care teachers offices.
Chloe had had therapy as a teen. She knew all the techniques and coping mechanisms but when she was in that place, when she was anxious, she forgot them all, when she felt good she knew deep breathing and grounding helped but when she was in that dark anxious place she just wanted her brain to stop and she knew that when she cut herself her brain would stop. The thoughts would stop and the physical pain would start and that was okay. That could be dealt with. She'd had months where the breathing techniques had gone well and her thighs and hips were filled with scars rather than cuts, but she was never free of the demons of her mind.
Other than the altercation with her mother Chloe's day had been alright. She'd done an operation and it had gone well. Happy Patient. A simple op but it was all good.
Chloe was always going to be a doctor she mused as she walked back to her flat, well Evens flat really, but she lives there , it was obvious she was going to be a doctor, her mum was a doctor and Gran was always going on about how proud she was. Chloe was good in school. Clever Chloe her friends would gently tease. Every Christmas her play kits would be gaudy plastic stethoscopes and giant fake syringes. Ever since she could talk she had wanted to be "a docker li mummy" except that one time when she was 14 when she told her mum she wanted to be a vet, her mum had totally kicked off about her "wasting her talents on animals" and had gave her an earful about saving people. Which if said gently would have been a pep talk but in the way it was said sounded like a telling off. As always.
Chloe loved her job, of course, she loved the fact she was saving lives, but it was stressful and exhausting. Sometimes she just wished she had a normal job like her friends, well not Fiona, Chloe couldn't deal with trying to teach reams of screaming 5 year olds a foreign language. But a job like Eilidh or Sophie mundane 9-5. She smiled to herself. They'd never held a beating heart in their hands. She rounded the corner towards the flat and saw someone sat on the wall. "Fi-Fi?"
"Chlo-bow, finally I've been sat here for like 4 hours!" Chloe's best friend Fiona ran over and enveloped her best friend in a hug. "Wha...why?" Chloe started
"Well I came home for Alice's graduation, she got a 2:1 by the way."
"Ah well done to your little Aly."
"Anyway I was home and since you weren't answering my messages and I wanted to see my fave little genius!"
I don't even live here. It's my boyfriends place, how did you know to come here?"
"I went to yours and that hippie girl"
"Riley" Chloe interjected
"Yeah her, she told me you practically live here"
"Yeah it's my boyfriend Evans place"
"I want to know all about this Evan...tell me all. I've brought chocolate and Prosecco, can we send Evan to the pub?"
"Not an issue he's on shift this evening, and I'm off tomorrow too."
Chloe had a great evening watching Netflix drinking bubbly and eating chocolate and chatting 19 to the dozen about all sorts, not stopping giggling. With a genuine smile on her face."
