Chapter 32
I messaged Stella as soon as I reached my car: Any chance you’re in the market for a chat?
I was feeling fragile, and I knew that she’d be gentle.! Visiting hours start soon.!
That would be lovely! Thank you! Visiting hours start soon.
Stella was at sleep school again. I’d totally forgotten that she was booked in after the hen’s weekend, that her mum had stayed on to look after Evie.
I ducked into a cake shop en route and bought a box filled with slices and tarts – she was a patient at a private maternity hospital for people with expensive insurance, but there were still limits on edible hospital food.
‘Becs!’
I was on the ramp leading up to the hospital when I heard my name. I turned around. It was Nick, walking towards the entrance, a few steps behind me.
‘Hey,’ I said then I felt a ripple of unease as I remembered the last time I’d seen Nick. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m guessing the same thing you are,’ he said, looking slightly amused.
‘You didn’t have time to visit when Evie was here,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ he said, taking my snark on the chin with an expression that looked very similar to remorse. I realised that he wasn’t wearing scrubs or his hospital lanyard. ‘But then my little sister said some things that hit a nerve.’
‘If it’s any consolation, I basically yelled at everyone that night,’ I said, and couldn’t help but grin, disarmed by Nick’s candour.
‘Do you have time for a coffee?’ Nick asked.
‘Aren’t you going to see Stella?’ I replied.
‘She’s used to me letting her down,’ he said wryly as he shrugged his broad shoulders.
‘Okay,’ I said. We walked through the mostly residential streets until we found a small strip of shops and an open cafe. I let Nick buy my drink the way he’d always bought me little treats when we were growing up.
‘You were right,’ Nick said, as soon as we sat down at a table.
‘I thought I was doing a good enough job. I was topping up Stella’s super while she wasn’t working.
I dropped Evie off at kinder sometimes. I added items to the online shopping cart.
And I thought that everything was okay. Stella’s so stoic.
And Mum helps her out so much...’ He paused, fiddling with a sugar sachet.
‘And I told myself that I didn’t have a choice.
Medical training is brutal. Obstetrics jobs aren’t flexible.
That I had to get lots of rest because what I do is a matter of life and death.
But after Saturday night, and your unfiltered feedback imparted by way of a nostalgically nerdy family game. ..’
Despite the seriousness of this conversation, I giggled and Nick snorted. For a second, we could have been kids again – me a precocious eight-year-old, Nick a gangly, studious teenager.
‘Well, I’ve done some thinking, some soul searching, this week,’ he continued when we’d stopped cackling into our drinks. ‘And all of that is true. But the thing is, the biggest role model I’ve had is Dad. And you know what he was like: “Love what you do—”’
‘“And you’ll never work a day in your life,”’ I recited, finishing Dad’s oft-recited catchphrase.
We both laughed again.
‘Except, I think he uses love as a Trojan horse for selfishness. I think Dad is an excellent doctor but also a very self-absorbed man. And I don’t want to have a life like his. I don’t want to miss my kids’ childhoods. I don’t want my wife to resent me. To leave me.’
‘So, what are you going to do?’ I asked. All the judgement, intentional or unintentional, was gone from my voice.
‘This is actually what I was coming to tell Stella,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think she’ll mind if I tell you.’
He took a deep breath.
‘Today I got a new job as part of an obstetrics group,’ he said.
‘Congratulations!’ I said. ‘But what’s that?’
Nick laughed. ‘It basically means that I’ll be one of five obstetricians who look after a big group of private patients.
So, we all meet every woman during the course of her pregnancy and then whoever is on shift delivers the baby.
Which means no overtime, no being called into the hospital during the night or on weekends, no more crazy hours.
I’ll work the occasional weekend and night shift, but otherwise I’ll be home a lot more.
I can do pick-ups and drop-offs and birthday parties and swimming lessons and date nights. ’
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘And what does this mean for your career?’
‘I don’t know. It’ll probably slow things down. And it’ll be less money,’ he said. ‘But maybe I’ll be less exhausted. And Stella will be less exhausted. And I’ll have time with the kids. And I think that when I’m not running on empty, I’ll be able to be a better doctor.’
He looked completely daunted, but I could also see a glimmer of hope in his eyes.
‘I’m sure you’ll be an incredible doctor,’ I said. ‘And husband. And dad.’
‘How did you escape the family curse of becoming Dr Evans?’ Nick asked. I suppressed a laugh at hearing him invoke the C word. But maybe this was his family curse. Maybe ‘curse’ was just a synonym for ‘baggage from your childhood you have to undo’.
‘I wanted to study medicine so much. I think I would have loved it,’ I said slowly. ‘And that’s why I didn’t let myself do it. I didn’t want to care about something, to love my job, as much as I knew I would. It felt too dangerous.’
‘Yeah, I think Mum felt like that about losing her career,’ Nick said. ‘I don’t think she ever really got over it, wanting something so much and not getting it.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked, confused.
‘You haven’t talked to Mum about her career?’ Nick looked equally perplexed.
‘No. What happened?’ I asked. I knew everything I needed to know about Mum’s career, didn’t I?
She was a GP. She worked at a women’s clinic where she helped women whose lives were being held hostage by their bodies.
Her patients adored her. She ran her clinics around her life – catching up with friends, looking after Evie and Alice, travelling with Hamish.
‘Mum was the superstar. She was brilliant while Dad was... fine.’
I stared at him. This was not the narrative I’d grown up with.
‘Her dream was to be a heart surgeon,’ Nick went on. ‘She got accepted into cardio training way before Dad did. And the colleges rarely let in women back then.’
‘But she didn’t—’
‘She got pregnant with me. She had to give up her place. They didn’t hold spots for something as banal as pregnancy. Dad got to live out her dream.’
Mum had retrained as a GP when I was a toddler. I’d thought that it was admirable that she got to do it all. I hadn’t considered that it had been a compromise.
‘I didn’t know that,’ I said, as I scanned my memories for any hint of a conversation with Mum about this. But there was nothing. And we’d spent my whole childhood talking.
‘I better go see Stell, tell her the good news,’ Nick said, draining his coffee. ‘Do you want to come?’
‘I think she’d prefer to see you than hear my problems,’ I said.
‘Your problems?’ Nick studied my face, his expression all brotherly concern.
‘Another time,’ I said, forcing a smile and handing him the box of pastries.
It didn’t feel like the moment to tell him that my wedding was off, and that my ex wanted to get back together, and to ask him to workshop the path forwards with me.
He’d had enough life-changing decisions of his own to grapple with this week.
‘Okay. But . . . let’s do this more.’
‘Yeah, that would be good,’ I said as he wrapped his arms around me.
‘And do one thing for me,’ he said, as he let me go. ‘Go talk to Mum.’
I picked up Mum’s prescription refill on the way home from the sleep school.
As I made us both dinner, the revelations from the unexpected conversations I’d had that day kept reverberating around my head.
‘Thanks so much, darling,’ she said, when I left a bowl of soup and her pills on her bedside table. ‘I know you’ve got a lot on at the moment with work and the wedding, so this means a lot.’
In her old, faded (albeit still fairly outrageous) flannel pyjamas, and her red hair pulled back in a bun and no makeup on her pale face, she looked uncharacteristically vulnerable.
She looked like the version of the mum only I ever got to see when we lived together – the mum I’d crawl into bed with during the middle of the night, the mum who woke me up for school every morning, the mum who would make pancakes on weekends when we had nowhere to rush to. The one who’d always been there.
I knew that it was now or never. I climbed onto the other side of her bed and lay down next to her.
‘What happened with you and Dad?’ I asked. Even though I was looking straight ahead I could see her turn to me. Then she moved her head into the same position mine was in, both of us staring at the ceiling.
‘What do you think happened, darling?’ she asked in a soft voice.
‘That you fell in love with another man and then left,’ I said.
‘That did happen,’ she agreed.
‘But I think that maybe it was more complicated than that?’
‘Mm.’ She made a neutral noise.
‘Was I one of those “let’s have a kid to try to save the marriage” babies?’
Mum sighed. ‘No. You were so wanted,’ she said softly.
‘You were the baby we were going to do differently. Your dad had barely been around when Nick was little. But I just thought... that’s what happens.
None of my friends really expected much help from their husbands.
And there wasn’t room in a family for two surgeons. Not with kids.’
She paused for a moment, slowly twirling one of the rings that wasn’t on her ring finger.