X-Sammii-X, thank you for your review - I'm really happy you liked the ending. I'm sorry you were having a bad day, but I'm glad my story helped. I hope you're having a better day today.
beckyboogle, I'm so glad you're still enjoying it! Cal and Ethan are going to find out quite soon, but there are a couple more misunderstandings first. But I have no immediate plans to split up Cal and Sarah. Thank you for your review!
Tato Potato, I'm glad everything makes more sense now. I have to concentrate quite hard when I'm writing the story or I end up getting as confused as Cal and Ethan! I'm glad you like Ethan and Emma as a couple. Thank you for your review.
ETWentHome, thank you for your review. You're right - all it will take is one simple conversation and the whole mess can be sorted out! But things might get worse before they get better.
CBloom2, I'm afraid Ethan is being irrational! And OOC. I mean, Ethan asking a girl out when he'd only known her for a couple of hours? As if! Thank you for your review - I'm really glad you're enjoying it.
Tanith Panic, I love misunderstandings in fiction too. I'm not quite keen on them in real life, but this story is great fun to write and it's wonderful that it's giving pleasure to other people too. Thank you for your review!
"Are you sure you'll be okay?" said Sarah, as she sat with her arm around her twin sister. "I do want to kill him, but it doesn't have to be now. I can stay with you if you need me."
Emma didn't see how she could ever be okay again, but she nodded. "I'm fine. I just need to get over him."
"And he needs to get over himself!" said Sarah viciously.
Emma tried to laugh but ended up sobbing instead. "He just didn't seem the type to be horrible to anyone. He was so sweet! He's got those melting brown eyes and that fluffy blond hair and those adorable big glasses."
"Appearances can be very deceptive," said Sarah. "Where men are concerned, anyway. With us, it's much simpler. What you see is what you get."
"I suppose it's the same with Cal," said Emma. "He seemed like a complete flirt, but he turned out to be lovely."
Sarah nodded. She looked a bit guilty. "Cal might still turn out to be a rat," she said reassuringly.
"I don't want him to be a rat!" said Emma. "I want him to make you happy. I hope you get married and have babies and live together till you're 100. I'm really, really happy for you." She sobbed some more. "I've never been so happy in my life!"
The last thing Ethan felt like doing was working. He didn't want to do anything that could involve seeing Cal. He also wasn't sure if it was possible to work when your heart had been ripped out of your chest, but he knew he'd find out the answer to that very soon.
"Ethan? Are you okay?" was a question he was asked on numerous occasions by numerous people.
"I have conjunctivitis," was the reply he gave to all these questions, though he had a feeling that not everyone believed him. The problem with working in a hospital was that everyone knew what conjunctivitis was.
He managed to avoid Cal for the first hour, but it didn't last. Ethan locked himself in a toilet cubicle to have a cry and came out to discover Cal examining his swollen nose in the mirror.
Cal looked at him and sighed. "I thought that was you in there. Ethan, can't you at least tell me what I've done?"
"You know what you've done," said Ethan.
"No, I don't!" said Cal. He sounded almost upset. "I have no idea at all. But if you tell me, I might be able to fix it."
"There's nothing you can do to fix this. Ever." Ethan turned away, his eyes full once more. He wanted to lock himself into the cubicle again and have another cry, but he knew he mustn't keep his patients waiting any longer. He didn't think any of them were suffering as much as he was, but they all needed his help and he was determined to do his best. Even now.
Sarah stopped outside the hospital and tried to decide how best to do this. If she went in and asked for Ethan, she probably wouldn't be allowed to see him. Ethan was gorgeous (outside, if not inside) and he probably had random girls walking in and asking to see him all day. If they let all of them in, he'd never get any work done.
Though Sarah doubted he'd be getting any work done for a long time after she'd finished with him.
So, how would be the best way to do this? She could wait outside for Ethan, but he might not come out till lunchtime and possibly not even then. He might have an appointment in the broom closet with one of his colleagues. Or possibly more than one. (Sarah knew there was no actual evidence Ethan was seeing anyone else, but anyone who could break Emma's heart in such a cruel way was obviously capable of anything.)
No, she wouldn't wait for Ethan outside. She would go and sit in the waiting room with the patients. She knew from what Cal had told her that as well as saving lives in a place called Resus, the doctors also spent a lot of time working in cubicles with patients who were less seriously ill or injured. Sooner or later, Ethan would come to the waiting room to see the next patient – but instead, he would see Sarah. She'd take him outside for a little chat and then...
…well, Sarah wasn't quite sure what would happen once she'd got Ethan outside, but he was going to regret ever messing with her sister.
Cal wasn't sure what upset him the most. The fact he was being asked to leave his own flat (well, Ethan's own flat) was inconvenient, but nothing he hadn't survived before. The fact that Ethan wouldn't tell him what was wrong was also annoying, but again, it was typical Ethan. He really seemed to expect Cal to be able to read minds.
But there were a couple of things that really upset him. Firstly, the state of his nose. All his patients were looking at him and smiling. Even the one who'd claimed to be dying and was on the way to Resus had had a good laugh at Cal's expense. Even Connie had looked like she might smile and she never smiled. Not at Cal, anyway.
The other thing that upset him was the fact that even though Ethan was completely distraught and had cried in the loo on at least three occasions that Cal knew about (or possibly less than that if he'd also visited the loo for more conventional reasons), he was still doing a brilliant job. He'd been in Resus and everything and no-one had faulted anything but the state of his eyes.
Cal, on the other hand, hadn't cried once. He'd thought about it a few times: after all, it wasn't very nice being punched and insulted and evicted. Anyone would be. But he hadn't shed a single tear (apart from when he'd squirted himself in the eye with deodorant, which didn't count) but he'd still managed to get into a terrible mess both in cubicles and in Resus and it just wasn't fair.
After scalding his hand on some coffee, dropping and breaking the mug and then cutting his finger when he tried to pick up the pieces, Cal decided to go outside and take up smoking again.
Emma didn't know why Sarah wasn't answering her phone. She'd tried several times, but it kept telling her that the call couldn't be connected. Either Sarah's phone was switched off, out of battery or she was somewhere with poor reception.
As she was probably at the hospital right now, poor reception was a definite possibility.
At first, Emma had been grateful for Sarah's protectiveness and happy for her to go to the hospital to 'sort out' Ethan. She didn't want Sarah to beat him up or anything like that (and she didn't really think she would), but she couldn't help hoping that Ethan had a really good explanation for his behaviour and that he might tell Sarah what it was.
After spending half the night trying to think of something, Emma had finally come up with the idea that Ethan might have come into contact with a nasty disease at the hospital. When he'd seen Emma, he'd obviously have felt terrified she might catch it, so he'd told her to go away.
That would explain everything – but Emma had found she didn't really like that idea. She didn't want Ethan to be seriously ill. Or even worried he might be.
So Emma had come after Sarah and was now at the hospital, but there was no sign of Sarah outside and she didn't really want to go in and ask to see Ethan. She wasn't sure they'd let her anyway and just the thought of seeing Ethan made her eyes fill with tears.
When a man came out of the hospital, Emma's vision was too blurred for her to see who it was and she began to panic it was Ethan, but once she'd wiped her tears away, she realised it was Cal.
Emma thought Cal would know where Sarah was if anyone would, so she quickly went over to him.
Cal looked at her in surprise, then delight. "Baby! What are you doing here? You look gorgeous!" He put his arms around Emma and kissed her.
Emma was so shocked, she just stood there for a moment, letting him kiss her. He wasn't nearly as good at kissing as Ethan. Then she regained her senses and shoved him away from her, giving him a hard slap on the cheek. Except she missed his cheek and hit his eye instead.
Emma just had time to see his eye was already bruised and swollen (obviously, she wasn't the first person to catch Cal misbehaving) before Cal gave a loud howl and covered his eye with his hands.
After what he'd done to her sister, Emma wasn't a bit sorry.