And standing in that corridor I understood that nothing had changed him. It had been there the whole time, waiting for a reason to be said out loud in public.
“I’ve got a one-year-old son with your best friend,” he said.
I looked at the child first, because he is a child.
Then at Yvie, who was not smiling, and not proud, and would not look at me.
She looked frightened.
And then at Rhett, who was waiting.
And I smiled and said: “Really?”
And something went across his face for about a quarter of a second.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
My phone went in my pocket. Hollis Quayle.
I’m downstairs. We need five minutes.
“Bad news?” he said.
“No. Not for me.”
And five minutes later the lift opened and Hollis came out with a
sealed folder under his arm, and looked at me, and then at Rhett, and then at Yvie.
And the moment she recognised him, the colour went out of her face and the bottle went out of her hand and broke on the floor.
What was in the folder.
Not a paternity test. I want to deal with that first, because it is what everybody assumes and because that child’s parentage is nobody’s business, including mine.
It was a complaint file.
On the fifteenth of May, 2023, the regulator received a complaint about me.
Anonymous. Four pages. It alleged that I had attended clinical shifts impaired, that my judgement had been affected by my personal circumstances, and that colleagues had concerns they were frightened to raise.
It named two incidents. Both real, both already investigated internally in 2022, both closed with no findings.
And it contained one line that did
the actual damage: that I had been “receiving treatment for mental health difficulties associated with infertility” and that this had not been declared.
I was taken off clinical duties on the second of June, 2023.
Fourteen months.
