Chapter 3: Collision Course
The Physician and Firkin was a cacophony of warmth and noise. The ceiling was low, strung with fairy lights that did little to pierce the tobacco-stained gloom. Laughter crashed against walls papered with framed, ironic prints of 19th-century surgical diagrams and faded rugby jerseys. The air was thick with the smell of yeast, fried food, and damp wool.
Roz hovered at the edge of their claimed territory, a long, scarred wooden table already littered with pint glasses. She held a half-finished cider, the condensation cold against her palm.
“So I said to him, that’s not a varicose vein, that’s your stethoscope,” Liam shouted, slapping the table. The group roared. Megan caught Roz’s eye and grinned, mouthing ‘you okay?’ Roz nodded, forcing a smile. She was a satellite, orbiting the laughter.
This was the normal she’d wanted. The simple, uncomplicated noise of peers. But every burst of laughter felt like a physical wave she had to brace against. She watched Ben attempt to explain the Krebs cycle using only beer mats, and felt a gulf open between her and them. Their concerns were exams, hangovers, weekend plans. Hers were a pair of blue eyes and a line drawn in the antiseptic air of a medical room.
She excused herself and pushed through the press of bodies toward the bar, needing a moment, a breath. The crowd was a mix of students and after-work crowds, a sea of flushed faces and shouted orders. As she waited, she scanned the medical posters behind the bar—a diagram of the human heart, ironically labeled “The Engine Room.”
And then she saw him.
He was across the pub, near the old fireplace, leaning against the wall as if trying to merge with it. Ally MacLeod. He wore a dark jacket, unzipped, over a simple grey t-shirt. He wasn’t with the usual boisterous rugby crowd. He was alone, a half-pint of something dark in his hand, his gaze fixed on the middle distance, lost in thought.
The noise of the pub seemed to dial down, muffled by a sudden, intense focus. Her breath hitched. He hadn’t seen her.
Then, as if pulled by a string, his head turned. His eyes scanned, passed over her, then snapped back. They locked onto hers.
There was no practiced charm in his face now. No easy smile. The raw, unguarded longing she saw there was like a physical touch. It wasn’t a leer or a smirk; it was a profound, helpless recognition that stripped away every defense. He looked at her as if she were a door out of a room he was trapped in. He looked hungry for the quiet she represented.
Time stretched, thin and taut. The crowd jostled between them, breaking the line of sight, but it was too late. The connection had been a live wire. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic, trapped bird. She remembered Hammy’s voice: If he so much as smiles at you in a corridor, you look through him.
But this wasn’t a smile. This was a confession.
Ally pushed off the wall. For one wild, terrifying second, she thought he was going to come toward her, to bridge the gap through the press of people. Her muscles tensed, ready to flee or to stand her ground, she didn’t know which.
He didn’t move toward her. He looked down at his drink, then back up at her, and something in his expression shattered. It was replaced by a grim, painful understanding. He gave a single, almost imperceptible shake of his head. Not at her. At himself. At the situation.
Then he turned.
He set his unfinished pint on the ledge of the fireplace and walked, not toward the main door, but down a narrow corridor marked ‘Toilets & Garden.’ A moment later, a draft of cold night air cut through the pub’s warmth as a side door opened and closed. He was gone.
Roz stood frozen, her fingers numb around her glass. The roar of the pub rushed back in, a deafening wave. She felt dizzy. The encounter had lasted less than ten seconds. No words. No touch. Just a look, and a retreat.
“You getting that or just admiring the tap?” the barman asked, nodding at her empty glass.
“Sorry. Another, please.” Her voice sounded foreign.
She paid, took the fresh cider, and leaned heavily against the bar. Her whole body trembled with a strange, surging adrenaline. He’d seen her. He’d looked. And then he’d obeyed the rules, more decisively than she ever could have. He’d walked away. It felt like a victory that tasted of ash.
“There you are!” Megan appeared, linking an arm through hers. “We’re playing a terrible game involving clinical mnemonics and shots. You’re needed. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Just… crowded,” Roz murmured, allowing herself to be led back to the table.
For the next hour, she laughed when she was supposed to, sipped her drink, and let the noise wash over her. But her mind was in the cold, dark garden she imagined beyond that door. She saw his retreating back, the set of his shoulders. Hammy gave me a proper skelping. He was respecting the line. He was being the gentleman Hammy insisted he could be.
So why did it feel like a loss?
The night blurred. More drinks were consumed. Plans for a chaotic move to a club were loudly debated and abandoned. As the group began to gather coats, groaning about early shifts, Roz slipped away again.
She moved through the pub, past the gents, and pushed open the heavy side door he’d used.
The garden was a concrete slab with a few lonely benches, lit by a single, buzzing security light. It was empty. The night air was biting, clearing the cider fog from her head. She walked to the high brick wall that bordered the lane, hugging herself against the cold.
On the bench, half-hidden in shadow, sat a single, empty pint glass. Not his—that was still inside. This one was clean, abandoned by someone else.
But beside it on the wooden slat, something caught the orange glow of the light. A small, rectangular slip of paper, weighed down by a pebble.
Her pulse, which had finally begun to settle, kicked back into a gallop. She shouldn’t. Every professional instinct screamed at her to walk back inside.
She stepped forward and picked it up.
It was a bookmark from a shop called ‘The Old Town Bookworm.’ The card was thick, cream. On one side, a printed quote: “We read to know we’re not alone.” – C.S. Lewis.
On the other side, in a neat, sloping hand, was written:
Roz,
Saw the medical crew descend. Knew you’d be among them. Came to… I don’t know. See a friendly face? Stupid.
I’m respecting the line. It’s a good line. Necessary.
But the quote made me think of you. In the silence of the library, not the noise of the pub. Where you belong.
A.
She stared at the words until they blurred. He hadn’t just seen her. He’d seen her friends. He’d identified her tribe, placed her among them, and then removed himself. He’d come hoping for a glimpse, and left a note explaining his own retreat. It was an apology, an acknowledgement, and a connection, all at once. It was utterly disarming.
The back door of the pub swung open, spilling light and laughter. “Roz! Taxi’s here!” Liam yelled.
“Coming!” she called, her voice strangely steady.
She folded the bookmark once, precisely, and slipped it into the inner pocket of her jacket. It felt like carrying a lit match. Dangerous, fragile, warm.
She walked back into the noise, through the pub, and out into the Edinburgh night where her friends bundled into a waiting cab. She slid in beside Megan, the warmth of bodies a sharp contrast to the cold garden air still on her skin.
As the taxi pulled away from the curb, she looked back at the pub. The side door was closed, the garden in darkness. The grenade was no longer inert. He had picked it up, examined it, and carefully handed it back to her.
And she, against all her training, had pocketed it.
The taxi smelled of pine air freshener and stale regret. Roz pressed her forehead against the cool window, the city lights streaking past in blurred ribbons of gold and white.
“That was a good night,” Megan sighed, slumping against her shoulder. “We need to do that before every geriatric psych shift. Anaesthetise the fear.”
“Only six weeks left of this placement, thank God,” breathed Megan, her words slightly slurred with tiredness and cider. “Old age psychiatry is not for me. All that wisdom and they just want to talk about their bowels.”
Roz smiled in the dark. “I’m not sure sports medicine’s for me.”
The admission surprised her as it left her lips. It was the first time she’d given voice to the quiet unease that had been building since Hammy’s office, since the look across the pub.
Megan lifted her head. “What? But you’re, like, their star pupil. Hammy basically said so.”
“It’s complicated,” Roz murmured, the bookmark a phantom weight over her heart.
“What you doing after, then?” Megan asked, yawning.
The answer came softly, born in the quiet of libraries and the silent understanding of unspoken pain. “Paediatrics,” she murmured. “Some CAMHS team, maybe.”
Child and Adolescent Mental Health. A world away from roaring stadiums and machismo. A world of quiet listening.
“Yeah,” Megan said, her voice fading. “That fits. You’ve got the calm for it.”
The taxi dropped Megan first. Roz walked the last empty streets to her flat alone, the click of her boots on wet pavement the only sound. Upstairs, she didn’t turn on the main light. She went straight to the small desk by the window, the chaotic surface a landscape of open textbooks and highlighted notes.
She took the bookmark from her pocket. The cream card was slightly warm from her body. She read the words again in the pale blue glow of her desk lamp. Where you belong.
Did she? The library silence he imagined was a haven, but also a hiding place. The pub’s noise was an assault. Where was the space in between?
She opened her laptop. The search bar blinked. Her fingers hovered.
Then she typed: ‘T.H. White The Once and Future King passage bravest people cowards.’
The search results flooded in. She clicked on a digitised page from a literary blog. There it was, the full context. It was from a section where the wizard Merlin advises the young Arthur. The bravest people are the ones who don’t mind looking like cowards. It was about strategic retreat. About choosing your battles.
He hadn’t just sent a pretty line. He’d sent a message. An explanation for his flight from the pub. He was following Merlin’s advice. He was being brave by looking like he was retreating.
“Clever,” she whispered to the silent room.
It changed the texture of his exit. It wasn’t just defeat. It was tactical. A deliberate, painful holding of the line. Her respect for him, a dangerous and unwelcome feeling, deepened.
She closed the laptop. The room was dark save for that one pool of light on the desk, illuminating the bookmark. She traced the edge of the card with her fingertip.
Then she pulled her orthopaedics textbook toward her. Campbell’s knee rehab plan was due for Hammy tomorrow. She opened the file, her mind mechanically engaging with the details of ligamentous healing, her professional discipline a rigid anchor.
But her other hand stayed resting on the bookmark, a secret touchstone to a world that wasn’t on the syllabus. The narrative had split. One path was typed in clinical reports under the glare of her lamp. The other was handwritten on cream card, waiting in the dark.
The orthopaedics report was flawless, a twelve-page monument to focused distraction. She delivered it to Hammy’s inbox at 7:30 a.m., the empty stadium corridors echoing with her footsteps. She didn’t mention the pub. He didn’t ask.
Her shift was a parade of routine strappings and ice-pack allocations. The players were subdued, nursing Monday-morning muscles. She kept her eyes on her hands, on the tensile tape, on the swelling she was assessing. Nowhere else.
“MacLeod. My left calf. Feels like a tight guitar string.”
His voice was closer than she expected. She looked up from the treatment couch where she was packing a cryo-compression sleeve. He stood a professional distance away, dressed in training kit, his expression carefully neutral. A player seeking a medic. Nothing more.
“You should see one of the physios,” she said, her voice thankfully even.
“They’re all busy. Hammy said you could do the needling. If you’re comfortable.”
It was a test. Of her, of the line. A legitimate clinical request layered with unspoken history. Refusing would be unprofessional. Accepting would be agony. She met his eyes. The raw longing from the pub was gone, banked behind a respectful, practised calm.
“Lie down,” she said.
The procedure was simple: clean the skin, identify the knot in the gastrocnemius, insert the fine acupuncture needle to release the tension. Her training took over. Her fingers palpated the hard, corded muscle in his calf. He was warm, his skin dusted with fine blond hair.
“Tell me when you feel a twitch,” she said, her focus entirely on her anatomy.
“I feel it,” he said quietly, not a flinch.
She worked in silence, the only sound their breathing. The intimacy of the act was profound and clinical, a paradox that made her palms sweat inside her gloves. He had put himself, quite literally, at her mercy. A sign of trust, or a deeper game.
“Hammy’s report was scathing,” he said, his voice low, conversational, as if discussing the weather.
“His reports usually are.”
“No. I mean the one to the university. About the data breach. He cited himself for ‘gross procedural oversight.’ His words.” Ally let out a short, humourless breath. “My charming the coordinator got a formal warning. His carelessness got a black mark. He made sure the scales were balanced.”
She inserted the last needle, her mind reeling. Hammy hadn’t just reported it. He’d thrown himself under the bus to make the point absolute. The cost of the line.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“So you know the line is made of stone. Not chalk. He built it with his own reputation.” Ally turned his head slightly on the towel, looking at the wall of anatomy charts. “It’s a good line. I’m not disputing it.”
She removed the needles with precise, swift movements. “All done. Try not to overload it in scrum practice.”
He sat up, rotating his ankle. “Cheers.” He stood, hesitated. “Roz.” The way he said her name was a closed-door confession. “That night. At the pub. I shouldn’t have come.”
“You left.”
“I still came.” He held her gaze for a second too long, then gave a curt, professional nod. “Thanks for the needling.”
He walked out of the treatment room, leaving her with the used needles and a tremor in her steady hands. The interaction had been perfectly correct, and it had shaken her more than any flirtation could have.
Later, in the windowless office, Hammy grunted over her report. “Campbell’s rehab plan. It’s adequate.”
From Hammy, this was a fanfare. He slid a fresh folder toward her. “New project. Concussion protocol review. The RFU is updating their guidelines. I want our perspective. You’ll lead the literature review.”
It was a huge responsibility, a vote of confidence that felt like both a reward and a shackle. “Me?”
“You’ve got the brain for it. And you don’t get distracted by the… peripheral noise.” He fixed her with a stare that saw everything. “Doesn’t mean you ignore the players. Read this.”
He passed her a printed email. It was from the club’s head of welfare. It outlined a new ‘player-led initiative’ for mental wellbeing, a quiet forum for discussions beyond sport. The proposed faculty advisor was a lecturer from the English department. The listed player advocate was Alistair MacLeod.
“Seems the lad’s using his degree for something,” Hammy said, watching her. “Smart. The pressure in these boys… it cooks some from the inside. Having an outlet, something that isn’t tackles and pints, it’s preventative medicine.”
She understood. This was Hammy showing her the full picture, the complex person behind the player. It was also a warning. Ally was embedding himself in the institution, becoming part of its fabric. He wasn’t just a problem to be managed; he was becoming a colleague in care.
The duality was dizzying.
That evening, her flat felt claustrophobic. The concussion research glowed on her laptop screen, a maze of clinical studies on subcortical impacts and cognitive decline. She needed air.
She walked down to the corner shop, the Edinburgh chill biting through her thin jacket. She bought milk she didn’t need and a bar of expensive chocolate. As she fumbled for her keys back at her door, her foot knocked something on the mat.
It wasn’t an envelope. It was a small, sealed, brown-paper package, the kind used for old books. No address. Just her first name, written in that same, neat script.
Her heart stalled. She snatched it up, unlocked the door, and stood in her hallway under the harsh bulb.
Inside was a book. A slender, vintage Penguin Classics edition of T.H. White’s The Once and Future King. The used pages were softened, the spine cracked with love. A slip of paper marked a page.
She opened it. The highlighted passage was there: “The bravest people are the ones who don’t mind looking like cowards.” But in the margin, in pencil, was a new note. The writing was hurried, less controlled.
For the library silence. Where you belong. This is mine. I thought you should see it. No reply expected. Or possible. - A
She sank onto the bottom step of her stairs, the book heavy in her hands. He had given her a piece of his interior world, the thing he hid. It was not a love note. It was a manifesto. It was him saying, This is who I am when I’m not who you see.
It was the most intimate thing anyone had ever given her.
The rules were clear. No contact. She couldn’t text. She couldn’t call. She couldn’t walk up to him at Murrayfield. A reply was impossible. He had built the constraint into the gift itself.
But he had also given her his territory. The book. The words. The silent space where his mind lived.
She climbed the stairs to her quiet flat, the weight of the book a tangible anchor. She put the milk away. She placed the chocolate on the counter. Then she sat at her desk, the clinical glare of her laptop on one side, the soft, cream pages of the old book on the other.
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, the concussion research waiting. Then they drifted to the book’s margin, tracing the faint pencil lines of his note.
No reply expected. Or possible.
The problem was, she was a diagnostician. She was trained to observe, to interpret, to find a pathway through complex systems. And this was the most complex system she had ever encountered. A challenge had been laid, not of romance, but of understanding. It sat in the silence, demanding nothing.
And in that silence, she began, very carefully, to think.
And in that silence, she began, very carefully, to think.
She thought for three days. The book lived on her bedside table, a quiet monument. She did not open it again. Its presence was enough, a fact to be considered alongside her physiology textbooks and the concussion research that now consumed her daylight hours at Murrayfield. The work was a refuge, a labyrinth of clinical data where emotion had no place.
Hammy watched her with a hawk’s quiet approval. “You’re digging deeper than I asked,” he said, glancing at her annotated literature review.
“The studies on long-term cortical thinning in forwards are inconclusive,” she replied, not looking up. “The methodology is flawed.”
“Aye, well, tell the RFU that. Gently.” He dropped a stack of player monitoring files on her desk. “Cross-reference their head impact data with these training logs. Look for patterns.”
The work was meticulous, demanding, and perfectly timed. It required every ounce of her focus. It almost worked.
Almost.
On Thursday, she was in the equipment room, counting ice packs. The heavy door swung open and the space filled with the presence of several players, a cloud of sweat, deep laughter, and the scent of liniment. She kept her eyes on her clipboard, a familiar shield.
“—so I told him, if you pass it there again, I’ll use your head as a polishing cloth.”
The voice was his. Close. She felt the air displace as he reached past her for a roll of tape on the shelf above her head. His arm brushed her shoulder. A static jolt, purely neurological, shot down her spine.
“Sorry,” he murmured, the word meant only for her.
She nodded, a tight, professional motion, and took a step back. The other players joked, their banter a noisy wall she couldn’t penetrate. She finished her count and left, her breath held until the corridor’s cool silence hit her face.
Back in the medical office, the numbers on her spreadsheet blurred. The ghost of the contact lingered on her shoulder. She closed her eyes.
Maybe in a month, the thought came, unbidden and treacherous, when this placement is over, I could accept the invite for coffee. There would be no boundary crossing then.
She shook her head, physically trying to dislodge the fantasy. Now? What was she thinking? He was a rugby player. Boisterous, laddish probably, although he had a private school education, a posh Edinburgh accent and a degree from St Andrews. That beautiful dark hair, that smile, those eyes, and that body, that body! Oh my god, stop it now.
“You alright, Roz?” Hammy’s voice cut through. “You’re staring at that screen like it insulted your mother.”
“Fine. Just tired.”
“Right. Well, take this and get some air.” He slid a folder across. “Drop these signed clearance forms at the admin office. It’s in the main stand.”
The walk across the vast, empty stadium felt like a reprieve. The sky was a flat, pale grey, the pitch a startling green geometric island below. The admin office was a hive of muted phones and clicking keyboards. She handed the forms to a woman with a kind smile.
“Thanks, dear. Oh, while you’re here, can you take this to Hammy? It’s the finalised list for the player wellbeing forum.” The woman held out another envelope. “It’s on your way back.”
Roz took it. The envelope was not sealed. As she walked back along the concourse, a name caught her eye through the gap. She shouldn’t. She slowed, and with a careful finger, widened the flap just enough to see the typed list of participant names.
Her own was there. ‘Roz Connolly – Medical Student Observer (Ad Hoc).’
She stopped walking. The cold stadium air wrapped around her. Hammy had put her on the list. He’d enrolled her in Ally’s initiative. It was a logical, professional move—her concussion research dovetailed with player welfare. It was also a cage of exquisite design.
A door clanged open further down the concrete tunnel, echoing loudly. She looked up, shoving the envelope to her side.
Ally emerged, alone, pulling a beanie over his hair. He saw her immediately, freezing mid-step. They were fifty feet apart in the grey, empty passage. No crowds, no teammates, no Hammy. Just the distant sound of a groundsman’s mower.
He didn’t smile. He just looked, waiting, his hands shoved in his jacket pockets.
Every rule screamed in her head. She held up the envelope, a pathetic, professional prop. “Admin. For Hammy.”
He nodded slowly. “Right.”
The distance between them felt charged, a vacuum begging to be filled. He took one step forward, then stopped, his conflict visible in the tight line of his jaw. He was holding the line.
She was the one who broke. Not toward him, but into speech, the words coming out in a rushed, quiet tumble. “I got the book.”
His posture changed, a slight release of held breath. “Yeah?”
“It was…” Intimate. Dangerous. Perfect. “…kind.”
“It’s just a book.” He took another cautious step closer. Now she could see the flecks of green in his blue eyes. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“It does, though,” she said, and the truth of it hung between them.
A long, quiet moment passed. The mower sound faded. He glanced toward the pitch, then back at her, his voice dropping even lower. “The forum starts next Tuesday. Four o’clock. The old seminar room.”
“I saw the list.”
“Right.” He bit his lip, a surprisingly boyish gesture. “Will you be there? As an observer?”
It was a professional invitation. It was also a request. She had a choice. She could ask Hammy to remove her name. She could hide in her concussion data. She could continue to be a satellite, orbiting the noise but never entering the atmosphere.
He was waiting, his expression open and utterly vulnerable, all his armour left in the locker room.
“Yes,” she said. The word felt like a key turning.
A faint, real smile touched his eyes. Not the dazzling one for the cameras. A smaller, private one. “Good.” He nodded once, as if sealing a pact. Then he turned and walked away, not back the way he came, but out toward the pitch, leaving her standing alone in the tunnel.
She looked down at the envelope in her hands. The trajectory of her placement had just shifted irrevocably. She wasn't just observing the team's physical mechanics anymore. She was being pulled into its psyche, and into his.
The line was still there. But now they were both standing on the same side of it, looking at the same complicated horizon. She walked back to the medical office, the cold air no longer biting, but sharp and clarifying.
She had five days until the forum. Five days of data and ice packs and avoiding brushes in equipment rooms. Five days to prepare for a conversation that, for once, wouldn't be about injuries.
For the first time, the silence around her didn’t feel like hiding. It felt like the calm before a fundamental rewrite.