If Only
Anna has never had a problem making herself heard, even in the noisiest environs of a trauma room, but Tolly has an uncanny ability to leave her mute. A cascade of emotions thrill through her. Incredulity for one. How is he here? Disbelief. It cannot be him. She is hallucinating. Tolly is asleep in his home in Los Angeles. This must be some other bearded man she is mistaking for him.
But then he repeats his call, softer, shaded with traces of hope and longing: “Anna.”
She knows beyond doubt it is him. She stands stock still even as an errant raindrop snakes its way down her spine, soaking into the waistband of her trousers. He smiles and Anna’s heart flutters. Disbelief is swept away by joy. Effervescent, earth-shaking joy. It is truly him, standing in front of her. The misery she has felt since they parted disintegrates with his presence. She can no longer pretend the arguments against being with him are valid. She is overset by love.
“Tolly,” she croaks her reply, but it is a weak response, the word barely audible. She wants to lift her hand, to cup his chin, to stroke down his face, but she dare not. She can only stand in the pouring rain, drinking in his eyes.
He is grinning, his teeth showing a bright white that has no place in this grey, rain-soaked landscape. Faint lines crinkle at the corners of his eyes, feathering out and disappearing into his hair, each one a testament to his pleasure in seeing her. His eyes are wide – with surprise, yes, but also, she thinks, with hope.
She tries again, her voice stronger this time. “Tolly?” And into the word she puts all her questions. Is he truly here? Why is he here? How is he here?
But all he says is “Yes”.
A gust of wind throws another spit of rain into her face, but she ignores it. She rouses enough to say something – she may never get another chance. “I’m sorry I left. I said I would stay with you and I didn’t. You woke up alone.”
His brow furrows. “I woke up with Ryan,” he points out. “I would rather it had been you.”
“Me too,” she admits. She can feel damp leaking into her shoes. She may be standing in a puddle, but she dare not move in case it breaks the spell keeping him here. Now he is in front of her, she doesn’t want him to leave. She can just see him clearing his throat and making some inane excuse about his presence being required elsewhere. She needs to speak, to say something to hold him.
Except she has nothing more to say. All her thoughts, all her words, are gone. They stand in silence, each facing the other, the rain splattering on the paving around them.
“I wanted to speak to you,” he says finally.
“I know.” How can she explain? She had thought it would be simpler, easier, but she knows now it was a false belief. Tolly wasn’t going to disappear from her heart just because he was no longer in front of her.
“But you asked me not to.”
She dips her head, breaking the contact. She is shamed. “I know.”
It made so much sense at the time, but with him here, it all seems vaguely silly now. All the arguments against them which seemed so weighty are revealed as flimsy.
“I thought I would never see you again. I’m only here by chance. This is fate, us meeting like this.”
She bites her lip. She is not a great believer in fate, but she can see the pain she has already caused him.
“As I couldn’t message you, I didn’t know how to find you. I don’t even know your name.”
The cold pierces to her very marrow, and it has nothing to do with the weather. How could she forget? Eleanor’s truth-telling had set Anna free of obligation to her sister, but instead there was something new. When Tolly hears who she is, they will be finished. She cannot imagine he would allow another Mortimer sister to break his heart yet again.
Tolly is here, miraculously here. But nothing has changed. They cannot be together. They never will be. And ironically, in this moment, she knows her wish clearer than ever before. She wants him. She wants the man she has already thrown away once. She would be prepared to turn her life upside down to have him. Hell, she would even start medicine all over again. Or maybe not. But with Tolly’s money, surely there would be a way through. A couple of years in Canada, perhaps? Or an endowment at a US university hospital?
She raises her chin. This has to be faced. Now is the time for her to pull up her big girl panties. Tolly has a right to know whom he is talking to, whom he is courting before they go any further.
“I’m Dr Anna Mortimer. My older sister, Eleanor, read History at Oxford.”
She watches the shock spread across his face, the confusion in his warm brown eyes, an old sadness surfacing.
“I know,” she takes a big sigh, sensing the end of everything. “I should have said something sooner. I’m sorry. But I was having such a lovely time, I didn’t want it to end. In fairness to me, I didn’t know what she had done to you.”
Silence. She has lost him.
“I understand,” she says. “I hope you find everything you want.” She dare not reach out, dare not touch him.
She takes one last look at him, drinking him in from top to toe, then she steps around him and heads into work.
As the Staff Only door closes behind her, she takes a deep breath. It was always too good to be true, she tells herself. It was never meant to be. Then she pushes all thoughts of Tolly away, buries them as deeply as she can. She will let them out tonight in the safety of her home but for now she has to function. She has to pay attention. A mistake here can leave someone crippled. Or dead.
When she feels steady enough, she heads off to grab some scrubs. And to find some dry shoes. She has no list today, James briefs her. Instead, they will both be doing emergencies and walk-ins.
She doesn’t see James again until lunch when they meet in the queue. As they shuffle forwards, she carefully asks him how he is doing.
“Not great,” he admits.
Anna realises she should be upbeat and encouraging, reassuring him there will be many more opportunities for love, that the right woman is right around the corner. But she cannot do it. Instead, she sighs. “I’ve always thought love is dangerous for doctors. Maybe we should all live our lives alone.”
James turns his attention from selecting a salad back to Anna. “That’s a level of despondency I’ve yet to achieve. Why are you so miserable?”
Anna drops a ham-and-cheese baguette on to her tray and moves forwards to the hot drinks section. She orders a latte, pays, and waits for James to finish up. Together, they make their way to a table. They have to pile the detritus from a previous customer onto a tray and push it to one side before they take their seats.
James pins her with his steely gaze. It doesn’t really work because everyone knows he has the heart of a teddy bear, but it is a sign he is expecting her to be honest.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s just … Look how many of us ended up pulled apart by the pandemic. It was hardest on those with loved ones. Look what happened to Doctor Coren. He was a great consultant and he could have done another ten years in the NHS, yet he chose to take early retirement. I saw how he was during the pandemic. He was so terrified of infecting his family, he was sleeping in his garden shed at one point. It burnt him out.”
James leans closer. “The pandemic was hard, yes. And it was especially hard on those with families. But that’s not why Dr Coren took early retirement.”
“Isn’t it?” Anna furrows her brow. “He told me he’d had enough. That it was time to put his family first for a change.”
James takes a forkful of his pasta salad and chews. Anna watches his Adam’s apple bobble as he swallows. Then he says, “That’s true but it’s also not the whole story.”
“No?”
James looks at her. “It’s not for general consumption, Anna, but his wife was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s.”
“Oh!” There is nothing more she needs to hear. She well-understands the impacts of the disease.
“He could spend the last years of her memories working apart from her or he could be with her whilst she still knew him. Everyone always assumes they’ll get to spend time with their partners when they retire, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen. By the time he retired, she would probably be in the last stages of dementia if she wasn’t already dead. He figured better to have a poorer retirement and make the most of the time they have.”
“Why didn’t he tell us, though?” she asks. She had thought they were friends, that they had bonded over their Operation Smile trips.
James’s pale eyes linger on hers. “Would you?” he asks. “Would you want to see the pity in everyone’s eyes? Instead, he had a good send-off. Everyone was happy for him, even slightly envious. Do you think the atmosphere would have been the same if they’d known?”
Anna could guarantee the atmosphere would have been different. Still, she is upset he hadn’t trusted her with the truth.
“How come he told you?”
His head tips on one side, as if he understands her emotions. “Time and place. I found him crying in the theatre scrub room the day after they found out. He needed to talk.”
Anna is silent. It is turning out to be a day of surprises, none of them good.
“Thank you for telling me,” she says.
“I’ll tell him you were asking about him.”
“You see him?”
“From time to time. We meet for a beer. Catch up on hospital gossip and stuff. You can take the man out of medicine and all that.”
“But you can’t take medicine out of the man,” Anna finishes.
“Yes. He’s a big loss to the department. So much wisdom locked up inside his head.”
Anna is silent but after a moment James shifts in his chair. “So to go back to the original,” he says. “My mantra is to take love wherever you can find it because no one is entitled to it. That’s what I learnt during the pandemic.”
Inadvertently, James has made the loss of Tolly sharper, but he is unaware of it. And in truth, Anna doesn’t feel she has any right to grieve over a man she voluntarily threw away. There is a certain sense of punishment, as if Anna never deserved to keep Tolly, because she didn’t value him enough when she had a chance.
Still, she doesn’t want him to think her too affected by their conversation. She turns the topic to the number of patients who have called her “nurse” that morning. Three. James and Anna finish up lunch talking over their cases, especially the odd or awkward ones. When they stand up to return to work, both of them feel lighter. Comradeship in action.
If only the rest of the day also improves.