Chapter 2: The Confession
The summons came via a terse email, subject line: ‘My Office. 4pm.’ No greeting, no signature. It could only be from Hammy.
Roz’s stomach performed a slow, cold somersault as she stood outside the medical office door at Murrayfield. The corridor was silent, the stadium holding its breath between matches. She could hear the faint, tinny echo of a radio from inside. She knocked.
“In.”
Dr. Gregor Hamilton’s office was a monument to controlled chaos. Filing cabinets groaned under the weight of decades of player records. A skeleton, donning a faded Scotland scarf, stood in the corner. The walls were a patchwork of team photos, yellowed anatomy charts, and a single, framed quote: ‘The body achieves what the mind believes.’ The air smelled of strong tea, antiseptic, and old paper.
Hammy was scribbling in a ledger, his reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. He didn’t look up. “Sit.”
She sat in the worn chair opposite his desk, back straight, hands folded in her lap. The silence stretched, broken only by the scratch of his pen. He finished writing with a definitive full stop, closed the ledger, and removed his glasses. His eyes, a sharp, assessing blue, fixed on her.
He pushed a chipped, steaming mug toward her. Tea, milky, the way the staff made it. “Drink. You look peaky.”
“Thank you, Doctor Hamilton.”
“Hammy.” He sighed, leaning back. His chair creaked in protest. His usual gruffness was there, but beneath it ran a current of something else. An uncharacteristic hesitation. He tapped his calloused fingers on the desk in a slow, uneven rhythm. “MacLeod came to see me. Two days ago.”
The tea burned her tongue. She said nothing.
“Seems he’s been carrying a bit of a load. About an interaction. An inappropriate one.” Hammy’s gaze didn’t waver. “Said he’d asked you for coffee. After you’d stitched him up. Said he’d gotten your number from me.”
The room felt suddenly smaller, the walls pressing in. The hum of the fluorescent light was deafening.
“I…” Roz began, her voice thin.
“He was right,” Hammy cut in, his voice low. “It was inappropriate. His request. My part in it.” He stopped tapping his fingers and rubbed his forehead. “I failed you, Roz. When he asked for your name, I was distracted. Thinking about his concussion protocol from the match. I scribbled your full name and the placement coordinator’s contact number. He must have called her, charmed her, got your mobile. I never imagined…”
He trailed off, looking, for the first time since she’d known him, genuinely uncomfortable. The admission cost him. This man, a legend in sports medicine, was apologizing to a fourth-year student.
“It’s alright,” she whispered.
“It is not alright.” The gruffness returned, edged with anger—at himself. “It was a breach. It put you in a compromised position. He’s a player. You are a student under my supervision. That line isn’t grey, it’s painted in ten-foot-high letters. I created a situation where you felt you had to manage his feelings and my unprofessionalism. That is my failure.”
Roz stared into the tea. A leaf drifted slowly to the bottom. She thought of Ally in the clinic, his embarrassed nod. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong rules. He’d gone to Hammy. He’d confessed.
“He was… honorable about it,” Hammy conceded grudgingly. “Came clean without prompting. Said he’d put you in a spot and wanted to make sure I knew it was his fault, not yours. Doesn’t excuse my part.”
“What happens now?” she asked.
“To him? Nothing. He’s a grown man who fancied a clever, pretty girl and made a daft approach. He’s been spoken to. He understands.” Hammy took a sip of his own tea, grimacing as if it were bitter. “To me? I have to report the data breach to the university. A black mark on my pristine record.” He said it with a dry, self-deprecating smirk. “To you? That’s what this meeting is about. I need to know if you feel you can continue this placement. If you can still trust my supervision. If he is going to be a problem for you.”
The question hung in the air, heavy and direct. She thought of Ally’s bandaged hand at the Infirmary, the weary look. He wasn’t a problem. He was a complication. A fascinating, frustrating complication that quoted T.H. White and apologized to her boss.
“He’s not a problem,” she said, finding a stronger voice. “And I don’t want to leave the placement. This is where I learn the most.”
Hammy studied her for a long moment, then gave a single, sharp nod. “Good. Because you’re one of the best I’ve had. You’ve got hands like a watchmaker and the sense to keep your mouth shut and observe. That’s rare.” He paused. “But this… personal entanglement. It’s a grenade with the pin pulled. Even if he’s being a gentleman now, it only takes one whisper, one misinterpreted glance. Your credibility is everything. More so as a woman in this field. You have to be twice as good, twice as smart, and twice as bloody rigid. It’s not fair. It’s just true.”
She knew he was right. The weight of it settled on her shoulders, familiar and exhausting.
“So,” he said, his tone shifting back toward the practical. “We draw a line. He is a player. You are medic. Full stop. If he so much as smiles at you in a corridor, you look through him. Understood?”
“Understood.”
“Right.” He opened a drawer, pulled out a file, and slid it across the desk. “Prove it. Campbell’s knee. Post-op scans. Tell me what you see and what his rehab should focus on. Distract that brilliant mind with some proper work.”
She opened the file, the clinical images a welcome anchor. She slipped into the language of tendons and ligaments, of flexion and edema. For twenty minutes, they talked shop. The awkwardness receded, replaced by the comfortable, challenging dialogue of mentor and student.
As she was about to leave, folder in hand, Hammy spoke again, his voice quieter.
“He’s not what he seems, you know. MacLeod.”
She froze, her hand on the door handle.
“All that charm, the lad’s magazine stuff. It’s armour.” Hammy wasn’t looking at her; he was staring at an old team photo on the wall, a younger version of himself smiling among giants. “He reads poetry, for Christ’s sake. Has a first in English Literature from St Andrews. Hides it because it doesn’t fit the brand. A mind like that in a body like that… it’s a complicated place to live. Doesn’t excuse anything. Just… gives you the full picture.”
Roz didn’t know what to say. The confession felt like a gift, and a burden.
“Thank you,” she managed.
“Don’t thank me. Just be smarter than the rest of us.” He waved a dismissive hand, back to being the gruff consultant. “Now get out. Some of us have real work to do.”
The stadium corridors felt different as she walked out. The line was drawn. Officially. By authority. It should have felt like a relief. It felt like a door slamming.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket as she stepped out into the sharp evening air. A message from Cat: Emergency! Need your clinical eye on a suspicious rash! (It’s probably just glitter but I’m dramatic.) Wine involved.
She smiled faintly, typing a reply. The normal world beckoned.
Another buzz. This time, an unknown number. Again. Her heart stuttered.
The message was just an image. A photograph of a well-worn, annotated page from a book. She zoomed in. It was The Once and Future King. A specific passage was highlighted in yellow: “The bravest people are the ones who don’t mind looking like cowards.”
Beneath the photo, a single line of text: Hammy gave me a proper skelping. He was right. This isn’t a request. Just a footnote. I’m sorry.
She stood on the pavement, the cold wind whipping her hair. The grenade, it seemed, hadn’t gone off. It was just sitting there, inert, with a note attached. She looked at the photo of the book, the careful highlight. A first in English Literature. He hadn’t just read it; he’d studied it.
She didn’t reply. She saved the number under ‘A’, then deleted the contact. Then she undid the deletion. She left it unnamed, a digitized ghost in her phone.
She walked toward the bus stop, the file on Campbell’s knee tucked securely under her arm. The professional path was clear, illuminated, and strict. But somewhere, parallel to it, in the shadows of poetry and poorly-timed smiles, another path seemed to whisper. And for now, the bravest thing, the only thing, was to keep walking straight ahead, and pretend she couldn’t hear it at all.
The bus ride home was a blur of fogged windows and murmured conversations. She replayed Hammy’s apology, his unexpected vulnerability. She saw Ally’s text, the photographed page. The bravest people are the ones who don’t mind looking like cowards. Was she brave, or just scared? The line felt impossibly thin.
Her flat was empty, a relief. She dumped her bag and stood in the kitchen’s quiet. The professional high ground was lonely. It tasted like cold tea and silence.
Her phone buzzed on the counter, skittering on the laminate. Not a text. A WhatsApp notification. Her medical student group chat, usually a torrent of panic about exams and locum shifts, was exploding.
She thumbed it open. The stream of messages was a frantic, joyful barrage.
Liam: RIGHT. FRIDAY. SOCIAL COMMITTEE HAS SPOKEN.
Megan: 7pm sharp. The Physician and Firkin. We’re claiming the big table by the garden.
Ben: Theme: Forgetting Renal Physiology Ever Existed.
Liam: LOTS OF BOOZE. LOTS OF DANCING. NO EXCUSES. EVEN YOU, ROZ.
The last message was tagged directly to her. She stared at the screen. The Physician was a sprawling, noisy pub near the university, all sticky floors and shouted conversations. The idea of squeezing into a crowd, of shouting over music, made her skin feel too tight.
Another message popped up, from Megan privately. Come on. You’ve been a ghost. One night. We miss your face.
The sincerity undid her. A simple, normal invitation. This was her real life, or it was supposed to be. Not silent standoffs in medical rooms, not cryptic literary apologies from professional athletes. Just cheap lager and bad dancing with people who understood the crushing weight of a pathology textbook.
She typed a reply to the group, her fingers hesitant. I’ll try.
Liam: TRYING IS FOR WEAKLINGS. BE THERE.
She put the phone down, screen facing the table. The commitment buzzed in her chest, a low-grade alarm. But beneath it, something else stirred. A defiance. Hammy said be rigid. Ally’s text was a footnote. But this? This was hers. A night where she wasn’t a student medic, or a boundary, or a potential mistake.
She could just be Roz. Whoever that was anymore.
The thought was terrifying. And, for the first time in weeks, it felt like a different kind of bravery. Not the courage of holding a line, but the courage of stepping away from it, just for a few hours, into the loud, messy, ordinary world.