Chapter 23 #2
‘I know, I know, and you were away doing your stint in that Romanian hospital.’ Like a saint.
She’d heard this story a hundred times and her parents came out of it like a regular Romeo and Juliet, only with more morning sickness, surgical heroics, and lots of late-night Skype calls.
They’d stayed together through it all. ‘I don’t want to talk about Bastian,’ she said firmly. ‘Please.’
‘OK, if that offended you, I apologise.’ His voice softened. ‘Are you at least socialising up there?’
‘Well…’ Reluctantly she told him she was attending the Burns supper and ceilidh tonight as a guest of honour. ‘They’re making me deliver the “Address to the Haggis”.’
‘Are they now!’ His bellowing laugh made her pull the phone from her ear. ‘How wonderful!’ She listened to him repeating this information to her mother, whose laughter sounded a little less certain.
‘Public speaking?’ she heard her mother say ominously.
‘I’ve practised. I know what to do,’ she told them quickly.
It was true. She’d hit the Burns books last night with the same amount of dedication she’d expended brushing up on the carpal tunnel injection procedure which she’d performed on Mrs Causwell this week under the watchful eye of Dr Millen.
‘My advice to you is—’ her father began, loftily.
‘Picture the audience naked?’ Alice tried, wishing he’d stop. Cranmer Hargreave had been a member of his medical school’s amdram group and loved nothing better than the feeling of all eyes upon him and the sound of applause.
‘My advice is stand still, legs apart, arms by your sides, go off book, so no reading from the page, and project your voice, really yodel it out to the very back row.’
‘Got it, thanks.’
‘And pace yourself, don’t forget to breathe, or you’ll find yourself gulping like a goldfish and fluffing your lines.’
‘I’m sure she’ll be fine, Cranmer,’ her mum said in the background over the sound of the kettle boiling. ‘Ask her if she’s sleeping any better.’
Always the same question, something her mother had agonised about ever since Alice was tiny and, unlike her sporty, food-shovelling, academic brothers, had proven to be a fitful sleeper.
At seven, her mother had shown little Alice a medical textbook that said children her age needed eight to ten hours’ sleep every night, and at that point Alice was averaging six. Her mum had kept a chart to prove it.
When Alice had tried to adhere to her new ‘sleep hygiene’ schedule, this had fallen to five hours a night, and the whole thing ended in a tearful, exhausted Alice begging her mother to drop it and let her close the door to her bedroom in peace, without anyone watching her and worrying.
Her mother, realising her mistake, had tried to comfort her, telling her that simply lying in bed resting her body was just as good as being actually asleep, and for all of ten seconds little Alice’s heart had lifted.
Lying in bed thinking? That she could do.
She was brilliant at it, in fact, but her dad had overheard and stormed in with his expertise, saying that was “patently untrue”, and that his wife knew as well as he that “only full cycles of deep REM sleep contribute to optimal cognitive function and cellular repair. Kindly don’t fill the child’s head with unscientific bunkum”.
‘Your mother asks, are you sleeping?’ her father parroted down the line.
Ugh! Why hadn’t she just sent them a few jolly Highland postcards to keep them at arm’s length and stop them feeling the need to ring? She shouldn’t have picked up the call, anyway, not when she was supposed to be working.
Just then, Cary’s face appeared around the back of the shed, searching her out.
‘Ah, duty calls,’ she said with a flood of relief. ‘Better go. Love you,’ and she’d hung up before Cary reached her, but the damage had already been done.
Her head was reeling with their words of warning about the risk to her professional standing if anything should go wrong on her watch with this garden project, or about her chances of fluffing the Burns supper address under the gaze of the locals and the scary Carenza McDowell when she was supposed to be making her very first public appearance as the (temporary) new town doctor, which called for gravitas and dignity, and then there’d been the bombshell about Bastian still hanging around like they hadn’t in fact split up weeks ago.
‘Oh dear,’ she couldn’t help saying.
‘Hey, hello!’ Cary greeted her. ‘You OK?’
‘Absolutely.’ She tried to steady her breathing. She’d promised herself Cary wouldn’t see her getting in a state ever again. ‘Is it time to plant the wildflowers round the trees, then?’
‘It is,’ he said. ‘But before we do, I wanted to give you something.’
‘No more presents, please, Cary, you’ve already been too kind and… Oh!’
It was just a leaflet.
‘I thought this might come in handy,’ he said, a little apologetically.
She read the front cover. ‘Bonnie Blair, MA, Counsellor, specialist short-term intervention and talking therapies. COSCA accredited.’
‘She’s setting up an office on the high street. I thought you’d want to know…’
It clicked into place what he was saying. He’d anticipated her very problem, the same one her parents had identified. ‘You’re right! We do need someone like this on board! Thank you! Have you already approached her?’
‘Eh?’ Cary didn’t seem to be keeping up.
‘To help with the garden project? I also figured we need a trained counsellor on the team.’ He didn’t need to know it was her parents’ misgivings that had alerted her to this fact. ‘What a coincidence.’
‘Oh, right.’ He had taken a step back, raising a hand to the back of his neck.
Alice turned the leaflet over, reading aloud. ‘Deciding to seek counselling after going it alone may feel daunting. I offer a non-judgemental, trusting space where you can share your fears and experiences in order to achieve acceptance, resolution and better peace of mind.’
Cary was looking at her like he was afraid.
A bleak feeling came over her. ‘What is this?’
‘The other day at the repair shop?’ he began.
Alice knew what he was saying. She’d lost it, turned unwell in public. She’d scared him.
‘Well,’ Cary said, softly. ‘Whatever happened, it frightened you, I could see that much. And I got to thinking, when I saw Bonnie putting up her signs today outside her office, I’d bring you one of her leaflets.’
‘For talking therapy?’
‘Aye.’
‘For me to try out? Listen, Cary, I work for the NHS. I can easily find a counsellor if I want to.’
‘Do you and your doctor friends really make use of counselling services?’ He said it so plainly, it rocked her.
‘Maybe not as much as we should,’ she confessed.
She thought of all the wonderful, conscientious people she’d worked with, who’d done the same training as her, seen the same awful things, held people’s hands as they underwent the most traumatic days of their lives, only to go home, eat, shower, nap and come straight back for their next shift.
None of them struggled as much as her, she’d concluded.
It occurred to her they might be pretending to be fine, too.
So many people were pretending out there.
Alice, like all NHS medical staff and students, had access to free and confidential services and information, a round-the-clock counselling line, and a peer-support service.
They were even offered a few free sessions of therapy with a counsellor.
She’d never made use of any of them. Had her colleagues?
Most of them seemed to clear their heads by training for marathons, doing yoga, hillwalking with their partners and dogs, or planning lovely holidays. She had done none of that with Bastian.
‘But there never seems to be enough time,’ she continued. ‘You don’t understand. We know our limits, we’ve been specially trained—’
What happened next winded her: the gentle, soft, wouldn’t-say-boo-to-a-goose Cary Anderson interrupted her. ‘Listen, Alice. We waited a long time for our new doctor, and now that you’re here in Cairn Dhu, we want to look after you. We want you to be happy and well and safe with us.’
She tried to find a suitable reply but all she could do was move her mouth, exasperated. She heard her dad’s voice telling her, don’t forget to breathe, or you’ll find yourself gulping like a goldfish and fluffing your lines.
‘And do you have a therapist?’ she said, on the attack and desperate to win this thing.
‘I do.’
Alice’s bubble burst. ‘You do? But you’re so… well adjusted.’
Cary let her think about what she’d said. He was kind of infuriating when he was in the right, and so reasonable with it.
‘I speak to someone every few months,’ he told her. ‘Like a wellness MOT. It costs money, but I’m fortunate to have that money, and I see it as an investment in myself.’
She wanted to tell him not to interfere, to say he was being just like her dad, the person who she knew, deep down, she was actually angry with, but a little livid streak of indignation was burning within her and she hated that it was Cary Anderson, of all people, who’d stoked the fire, and by being so bloody nice as well.
‘Look, I can’t get into this now. I have patients to see to and a project to run.’ It was haughty. It was childish. But it was the best she could do.
She left Cary standing by the compost bins as she stormed away.
* * *
The photograph, when it appeared in the online newspaper story, captured the whole day perfectly.
Standing around the bare trunk and branches of one of the Aspen trees, boots on spades, were the new doctor, the palest of the lot with a set look of determination on her face, next to the mountain ranger, his hands stained with wet mud, caught scowling towards the grinning Murray McIntyre, spotlessly clean even down to his Hunter wellies, and with a puppy he held close to Finlay’s cheek.
Kellie (who had outstayed her planned thirty minutes by over two hours) and Mr Forte posed with their spades too but with their arms interlinked in camaraderie.
Mhairi Sears and Cary Anderson bookended the group, since Livvie didn’t like having her picture taken, so instead stood behind the photographer shouting at Finlay to ‘buck up’ and to ‘fix that torn face’.
Mhairi was captured smiling down at Jolly who was very much living up to his name with both hands in the mud at the foot of the tree, happily filthy with streaks of earth over his rosy cheeks, mouth open in a squeal of delight, and hidden behind him, barely visible, was Shell, there but not quite there, the way she liked it, making bunny ears behind Jolly’s head, which he thought had to be the wittiest thing anyone had ever done, and just like his best friend to think of it, she was so fantastic.
Cary maintained a dignified stance on the end, looking down the photographer’s lens but not quite able to smile, his look of wistful regret captured forever.
The accompanying headline would read:
Successful Launch for the Cairn Dhu Social Prescribing Garden Scheme: Fun Was Had by All.