“Which makes it harder for you to confess that you’re not sure you want to carry on with the job. Not easy to walk away from something you’ve given so much to. Have you talked to them?”
“No. I don’t want to worry them.”
“Seems to me you spend a lot of time protecting your family, Dr. White.” He stood up, walked to the kitchen and returned with a bottle of wine and two glasses. “Drink?”
“I don’t usually drink during the day.”
“Make an exception. It might do you good to let go of those strict rules you set for yourself. And anyway, it’s almost dark.” He poured wine into two glasses and held one out to her. “Come and sit down.”
She took the glass from him and sat down on the sofa. Leather. Ridiculously comfortable. She sank into it and wondered if a sofa like this would encourage her to relax more.
“It’s crazy to even think of giving up something I’ve trained for my whole life, isn’t it?”
“Is it? Are you still enjoying it?”
“It’s not as simple as that.”
“Life rarely is.” He sat down next to her.
“Once you start down a track like medicine, it isn’t easy to change to something else. And the longer you stay on that track, the harder it gets. I always wanted to be a doctor. I thought this was it. This is who I am.”
“People change. And that’s allowed. There’s no rule book that says you have to do the same thing your whole life.”
“I can’t give up.”
He looked at her. “Why? Do you have dependents? A couple of kids you’ve failed to mention?”
“No.”
“Loans then. A big mortgage?”
“I’m still renting with a friend. I’ve been saving for a deposit on my own place, but I’m always too tired to look. And I like complaining about our broken boiler. It’s part of my routine.”
“So you have a financial buffer.”
“I suppose I do.” She’d never seen it that way. “But what would I do?” She took a mouthful of wine, and then another. “This is good. I should have had a glass of this to calm myself down this morning instead of going for a walk and getting lost.”
“Then you would have said, and done, things you later regretted. Wine for breakfast tends to have that effect on people.” There was a smile in his eyes as he toyed with the stem of his glass. “The reason you want to give up—does it have anything to do with the bad judgment you think you made?”
Apart from that appointment with the occupational health doctor, she hadn’t talked about it. It surprised her to discover that she wanted to. Maybe it was because Jordan was virtually a stranger. He wasn’t Vicky, who was well-meaning but clumsy. Or her parents, whom she needed to protect. She didn’t need to think about his feelings. He was as close to an impartial observer as she was going to get.
She took another sip of wine. “Yes, although if I’m honest I think I was starting to have doubts a long time ago but it was easy to talk myself out of those doubts. Medicine is a track you stay on for life. I never considered I might change direction. But when something big like that happens—” she paused “—you start to wonder if you’re even good at it. If, maybe, you’d be doing the world a favor by switching to a different job.”
“Is this another one of those instances when you’re being hard on yourself? Not that I know much about practicing medicine, but I can imagine the answer isn’t always clear.”
“But every decision you make has consequences.” She stared into the fire. “A girl died. Her name was Emma. She was fourteen years old, on a night out with her friends to celebrate her birthday. There were four of them, walking arm in arm, laughing. They were probably talking about clothes, and the boys they liked. The car came from nowhere. He mounted the pavement—sidewalk—”
“I know what a pavement is.”
“Yes. Of course you do.” Her breathing was fast. “He smashed into Emma, tossed her in the air like a rag doll, drove off without stopping. Can you believe that? He hit a girl, a human being, and didn’t stop.” Even after everything she’d seen in her life, she couldn’t accept what one person would do to another. She glanced at Jordan and saw the shock in his face. The fact that he found