Another hour passes, and by the time the last piece of tumour is cut away and I’ve sprayed the last bit of saline into Mr Wilde’s brain, my back’s cramping and I’m starving. I don’t know how Dr Prince does it. He tells me that I can scrub out now, and I step away from Mr Wilde, relief washing over me as I’m able to move again. I pull off my scrub gown and gloves with relish; I’m free.

‘I need to go to the ward,’ Dr Prince says as his friend the anaesthetist starts to make Mr Wilde’s settings ready for his move to intensive care. ‘Kitty, can you round with me?’

As we walk out of the operating theatre together I remind myself, yet again, that I have an overactive imagination. I’m an intern. He’s my boss. This isn’t a big deal. It’s work, not a date. We’re going to look at extremely sick patients on a hospital ward, not liaise in a five-star hotel at lunchtime. Still, I feel strangely excited, as if something naughty is about to happen, even though it isn’t. Being a junior doctor is an almost painfully grounding experience, but being near Dr Prince makes me feel as if I’m in the unusual position of having my head in the clouds while my feet remain firmly planted in the mud.

I sense something in him; something that’s buried deep inside but that shimmers close to the surface when we’re together. The need to escape, the desire to be somewhere different, far from the hospital and its politics and problems. I’m the most junior doctor in the operating theatre and he’s the most senior, but sometimes I feel as if we’re looking through the same window, separated only by a door that could easily be opened if one of us just leaned against it slightly.

Through the looking-glass, I can see the two of us, in our blue scrubs, getting into the lift and heading towards the surgical ward. We look like important doctors in a busy hospital, too busy and too important to fall into the rabbit hole.

We’re the only people in the lift. I press the button, and we stand on opposite sides of the small compartment, sizing one another up.

‘How’s the writing going?’ he asks suddenly.

I shrug. It’s not going, actually. ‘Writer’s block,’ I say. This is true. Being a junior doctor has rather sapped my creative drive.

‘You know, I’m publishing a book,’ he says, as the lift pings for level seven and we step out.

‘Really?’ I’m impressed, then envious.

‘It’s a book about the history of art,’ he says. ‘I’ve decided to start a publishing company.’

‘Oh!’ I say, laughing. ‘I thought you meant you’d written a book.’

‘The book launch is in Melbourne,’ he says.