I texted something random about his upcoming holiday to the Far East. This was around 10.30 am when I was in the middle of an outpatient clinic. For the record, outpatients are extremely boring and are the bane of every surgeon's life. WT was normally fairly prompt in replying texts, within 20 minutes or so. But an hour later, still no reply. I knew he normally had his phone on him. I wondered what happened after I left the club that night.
I was becoming paranoid and starting to hate both him and myself when he replied just after noon. He had been on-call nights and had only woken up. What a relief. A few more texts back and forth and I hinted that I'd gotten my new car and that I was looking to go for a drive. He suggested a nice place and I flippantly suggested that he should come out and see my car. To which he replied that he was already going out that night to celebrate his birthday (a few days later when he would be abroad) with his parents. So I left it at that.
Yesterday evening, I stayed late to scrub in on an operation. It happened that WT was the anaesthetist (that may have partly been a reason that I stayed late). We chatted in the coffee room while waiting for the patient to arrived. His shift ended while we were still in the middle of the case, but he smiled and said goodbye as he swapped with the night anaesthetist and left.
It was a long arduous case and when we finally finished at 10 pm, I had a nice surprise. He had texted me around 8pm saying he had seen my car in the hospital parking lot and that it looked fabulous. I replied that he ought to come out for a spin soon. We'd had some banter about this previously. But no reply and I felt like a fool.
But the next morning as I was driving in to work, I got a long text from WT apologising for not replying the night before. He had been packing and had an early night as he had left to drive to Heathrow at 4am. He said that he was looking forward to a spin in my car when he got back. A few more texts back and forth and he said he would see me when he got back in a few weeks time.
I wonder if that's all friendly banter and nothing else or could it be something? I'm reading too much into this...
