The practice where she worked was very large, with three separate locations supporting fifteen physicians. Mary, being a health visitor, spent only about half of her hours in-clinic. Jim Watson, being a locum, had mainly the evening and weekend hours nobody else wanted for his schedule. So after that first brief encounter, they didn't see one another again for over a month, when Mary limped into the health centre one morning with a twisted ankle, bleeding hands and shredded trousers.
Dr. Watson happened to be passing by, and hastened over with a, "Bloody hell. What's happened?"
"I was chased," Mary replied, with clarity and precision, "By dogs." The day really hadn't gotten off to the best start for her.
"Dogs?" he asked, looking oddly... disappointed? Peculiar.
"Dogs."
"Christ," he said, shaking his head, "Right. C'mon back, we'll get you sorted."
In one of the exam rooms, she hopped onto the table and began swabbing the palm of her right hand with disinfectant. Jim Watson put together a laceration tray and rolled a stool up to her knee. Plucking gently at the torn fabric of her khaki slacks, he said, "I think these will have to go for dusters," with a hint of question in his voice.
"Go wild. I've got another pair in my locker," she replied.
With shears, he cut off her trousers above the knee and looked at her injured shin. "These aren't bites."
"They chased me, they didn't catch me. But I had to get over a fence and I snagged myself on the top and, well," Mary frowned ruefully at her skinned palms, "Not exactly my most graceful moment."
"I'm sure whoever instructed you in fence-leaping back in nursing school would be very disappointed in you. I'd like to throw a few stitches into this deep one under the knee here."
Mary raised her eyebrows and leaned forward for a closer look at the worst of the gouges left by the fence, "Oh, come on. It'll be fine."
"It's gaping enough that it'll scar without sutures, and that would be a shame on such a nice leg," Jim rebutted, in what was actually a very charming way of ignoring someone else's medical opinion. Mary sighed, sat back, and let him get on with it. She hated getting stitches, but he did have a point about the one under the knee.
"When was your last tetanus jab?" he inquired, drawing lidocaine into a syringe.
"Less than a year ago," Mary replied, "This sort of thing is an occupational hazard so I keep everything well up to date."
"Leaping fences and being chased by dogs is an occupational hazard for nurses? I never thought you could get that much excitement in medicine."
"Oh, come on. Medicine got you into the territorial army… that wasn't exciting enough for you?"
For some reason, this innocuous remark seemed to startle him. He stared at her (very nice eyes, an unusual dark blue) and asked "How did you know that?"
"Sorry," Mary said, "I didn't mean to bring up any bad memories."
"No, no, it was – fine. I just didn't know you knew that… did you see my CV or something?"
The truth was that Jim Watson had very clean and shiny shoes beneath his elderly trousers and stood at parade rest when not in motion. This strongly suggested that Towneley had hired himself yet another shell-shocked vet. He collected them, having invaded the Falklands himself as a younger man. Four of the practice's permanent doctors, one of the registrars, and a third of the nursing staff were ex-military. It made for an extremely efficient surgery.
But nobody likes a smart-arse, so Mary lied glibly and said "I think one of the other nurses said something about it. Why?"
He smiled and shook his head. "Nothing. Just a bit of déjà vu. So you're chased by dogs often in health visiting, are you?"
"Dogs are actually a new one on me. But angry drunks, mad people, and unsafe buildings are all pretty par for the course. You may not have noticed yet but we don't exactly pull our patients from the best catchment area."
"I did pick that up a bit, yeah. So- you called on someone who set dogs on you?"
"No, these were someone else's animals. There are probably dozens of children on that street and that arsehole bred fighting dogs, didn't keep them locked up, and didn't maintain his fence. Honestly them chasing me is the best possible outcome."
Mary winced a bit as the lidocaine went in, and continued, "So after I got away I rang Animal Control, and the dogs were impounded. Which is good, since I'm meant to go back tomorrow and make sure the grandmother is managing the apnea monitoring appropriately… premature baby, very young parents." She considered for a moment, "I think I'll carry half a brick, just in case."
"Sounds like a solid plan. Can you feel that?" Jim asked, probing the numbed flesh around the cut with the tip of the syringe.
"No, go ahead. I'll have you know I'm a deadly shot with half a brick."
Jim chuckled softly at this, although it was actually quite true. She was a deadly shot with just about anything. Efficiently, he put in five tidy sutures and bandaged the whole thing up. Then he glanced up at her as she was struggling to put a plaster on the heel of her left palm.
"You're a lefty? Here, let me," he said, and put the bandage on. And then he said in quite a casual tone, "You should come out with me some night."
This temporarily flummoxed her, as her mind had been elsewhere. To give herself a moment, she said only, "I'm fairly sure office romances are frowned upon in the employee handbook."
"Oh, no worries, no office romance here."
"Oh. Oh!" Damn. All of the cute ones really were gay. Still, though, he seemed nice and it always paid to let the doctors kiss up to you a bit. "In that case, I'd be-"
"Nope," he interrupted, "I'm aiming for pure melodrama. Just like… really, dark intense passion. And then I'll cast you aside like an old glove and move on to someone else. You'll be ringing to scream at me at three in the morning as you sob, naked, in your bathroom."
His looked up at her and blinked, twice, with an utterly innocent face. Mary tilted her head and asked, "Should I be planning to boil your bunny?"
"Haven't got a rabbit, but I could do, if you feel it'd help."
At that, she couldn't hold it in any more, and laughed. He joined in, and she asked him, "My God, that is such an awful line. Does it actually work?"
"You tell me. It's my first go-round with that one."
"I absolutely don't believe that."
"It's true. Look, we're both adults. I don't see why we can't… quietly get acquainted outside work even if it is frowned upon."
Mary looked at him, raised an eyebrow, and came swiftly to two conclusions.
One: that there was indeed something in the employee handbook about dating your subordinates, and it wasn't favorable.
Two: that Jim did know what the handbook said, which unless he really liked reading two hundred pages of legal boilerplate probably meant that he'd gone to the index and looked up that specific fact. And while this could be a sign of a genuinely flattering interest in her personally, experience and cynicism said that he'd done it as a general insurance policy in case anything appealing with two X chromosomes happened to cross his path as he went about the work day. Still…
"I'll think about it and let you know," she said, hopping off the exam table.
"Yeah?"
"I will. But regardless, I do appreciate the help."
"Oh, it was no problem."
She smiled, and said over her shoulder, "Talk to you soon, Jim."
He seemed about to say something, but she was already out the door.
As she'd promised, she did think about it, because he really was cute and it really had been a while. Monday was her heavy paperwork day, so after she changed clothes and finished her belated rounds, she settled in at her desk and spent the time charting, answering emails, and setting up new appointments. Just… with some occasional Google breaks.
It was times like these when she missed her old job and the access to nice fat NSA databases bulging with interesting information about people. Google-stalking was by comparison really inadequate, especially when you were dealing with such a common name as "James Watson." That was apparently the name of one of the discoverers of DNA. And an actor who'd played Duncan Idaho in Dune . And in a weird coincidence, the lead guitarist of a band from her real hometown. She'd actually seen them as a teenager and they'd later gone on to be quite successful.
None of them raised any red flags, really. Eventually, Mary got deep enough and dug up what she thought was her particular Jim Watson on LinkedIn. MRCS from Leeds, joined the Royal Anglians, served honourably but without any particular distinction in Iraq, came back to England and took on a few locum jobs and didn't update his page after 2010. He was just what he seemed: a general practitioner of limited experience and mediocre qualifications. Dull. Safe.
But he was really very cute, fairly charming, and she could put up with dull for an evening if she had to. Decision made, Mary walked back to his office, but found he had gone for the day. She wrote her number on a post-it, added "Mary (mobile)" and slapped it on his monitor where he couldn't fail to see it the next morning. She reconsidered, and added "(Morstan)" below the name, since there was another Mary in the office. Then she then re-reconsidered and added "(The nurse who was chased by the dogs)" below that since she wasn't sure he knew her surname, thank you Doctor Towneley.
All in all, quite a productive day