Unintended Consequences
A story about how small things can have very big consequences, although we all know this anyway.
Many years ago, I was a young junior doctor working in a provincial town in The North of England. I was employed on a one in three rota in Medicine which meant I worked every third night and every third weekend on call, and for this privilege I had my own room to live in in the doctor's accommodation and for which I paid no rent. I was unmarried and unfettered by any commitments other than to my job.
The social life in the hospital was excellent. Those were the days before it was frowned on for doctors to drink while on duty, and the doctors mess had its own bar, and during the evenings a haze of smoke would hang in the air, whilst on call staff waited for their bleepers to summon them to the wards, or off duty staff would relax. There was also a bar in the doctor's accommodation building. Virtually every Friday or Saturday night there would be a party going on somewhere in the hospital, either in the doctor's residence, the nurse's residence, or the porters mess where many of the non-clinical hospital staff would stop and have a drink.
One Saturday night I had gone into town for some unknown reason I cannot recall. When I returned to my room I could hear a party happening on the floor above. and reasoning that I probably would not be able to sleep because of the noise, I went upstairs to investigate.
When I got to the bar it was heaving and I decided since it was not going to quieten down any time soon I would have a beer. As I stood at the bar a young lady pharmacist who worked in the hospital dispensary approached me. I had seen her there but did not know her name. And when she sat in the staff canteen she always sat quietly with couple of colleagues and did not mix much with other staff. It was very unusual to see her at a doctor's mess party.
"Hello Dr Anderson." she said in a soft lilting Welsh accent.
And then.
"Do you mind me talking to you for a minute but those three lads over there won't leave me alone and I'm a little uncomfortable. I'm Moira by the way."
I looked over toward the corner of the room where three young men were standing in a group. They looked half drunk and were pointedly eyeing her up. I recognised one of them as an X ray porter but did not know either of the other two, but assumed they were two mates who did not work at the hospital. In those days it was common for fellas to gate crash hospital parties to try and "pull" a nurse.
"Call me Roger." I said
"Don't worry they'll soon get bored and give up and go after somebody else. More than likely they'll have a few more pints and fall over."
We talked for a few minutes by which time the three men had vanished, and she wandered off to talk to somebody else, and a little time later people started drifting out of the room. Having not a lot to do and since I was not working in the morning I started to help with the clearing up, putting empty bottles in crates, collecting dirty glasses, and so on.
I had bent down to do something when I was aware of somebody standing in front of me, and when I stood up I saw it was Moira dressed in a thick winter coat.
I'm really sorry. She said
"My girlfriend who I came with has gone off with somebody, and those boys are hanging about outside the hospital gates, and I must walk past them alone to get home. Would you mind dreadfully walking me home. It's only a few hundred yards."
Put that way I did not feel I could refuse, so I asked her to wait, fetched a coat from my room, and off we went. Sure enough, the three guys were loitering as Moira had described, but did nothing but stare as we walked past them, and over my shoulder I saw them walk off in the opposite direction to the one in which we were headed.
After no more than a couple of minutes walking we came to her house. It was a small mid terraced house typical of Northern England and when we got there Moira invited me in.
The bottom floor of the house had a small entrance with a toilet leading off and a large front room and a kitchen behind. It was warm, clean, and neat and tidy. She took off her coat, took mine from me, and went to make coffee.
It was only when she sat down opposite me that I took my first proper look at her. I had never looked twice when I had seen her in passing at work, and when she had been at the party the lighting had been subdued. I had then walked her home in the dark when most of the time my mind had been on how to deal with three potentially aggressive drunks. I now saw she had brown shoulder length hair, large brown eyes, and freckled cheeks. She was of medium height, a little plump around the waist and had large breasts. As we talked and as she told me more about herself I remember thinking how easy she was to talk to, and I was suddenly very attracted by what I saw. At the same time, I was a little scared of her and did not know where to start. She looked so very pretty, and so very vulnerable and innocent.
Simply put Moira was more experienced than me. I was 26 years old and had slept with only one woman in my life. I had gone out with the same girl since I was sixteen years old and when she was fifteen, and we started to sleep with each other when I was 19 years old. This relationship had finished about a year previously. My knowledge of women was romanticised, limited, and mostly incorrect. I still thought of women as being made of porcelain, easy to break, and easy to offend, and imagined that their sexuality revolved around pleasing their man, more than their own sexual appetites.
