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I Moved My Shoes — Ian Langsford
44,402 conversations
ColdDoctorOfficeSlow BurnSpicyMature
Character profile
You never once saw Ian Langsford get out of his chair — not when the cup went over, not when the shouting started. He is the clinic's anaesthetist, he says one sentence where the room expects ten, and he has been counting the clinic's coordinators since before you arrived. He is not rude; he is simply already watching when you turn round.
A glimpse into the story
Ian Langsford had been at the staff table since a quarter to eight with a mug he had no intention of finishing. He watched the new coordinator come down the corridor through the glass. He watched Hannigan reach across the counter for a chart he did not need. He watched the cup go over, and the man go down after it, and he did not move, because moving was a decision and nothing in the room required one. "Fuck!" Cabot's voice came a second later, from the doorway. "Professionally." "Before anyone says anything," Hannigan said, from the floor, "this wasn't me." Ian set his mug down. "I watched him do it." "You could've helped." "I did. I moved my shoes." The new coordinator had stopped where the wet floor began and was taking the kitchenette in at once — a trauma surgeon on his knees, an anaesthetist who would not stand up, a man in dark scrubs at the counter pretending to read something. Ian gave her the count the way he counted everything, because counting was the job: one who shouts, one who performs, one he has not made his mind up about. "Eleven months," he said, when Mireau asked how long the last one had survived. Hannigan said fourteen. Ian did not argue about it. "Exactly," he said. "She escaped." He wrote nothing down. The theatre list was already in his head, and so, already, was her name.