Chapter Seven #2
In spite of what Maya believed, I had actually had a proper boyfriend at med school.
It had even progressed far enough for him to introduce me to his parents, but I’d ended it soon after.
He wanted to be a neurologist. They’re full of abstract ideas and theories, neurologists.
Surgeons, on the other hand, are precision craftspeople, trained very specifically to go in and fix things. We would never have worked out.
By and large, my solitary existence worked for me. I was surrounded by people all day; the few hours I had away from work were dedicated solely to study and sleep. Which meant I was entirely unused to this. To sexual energy, body language, conversations I would forensically examine later on.
His leg was close to mine. No work trousers today, no painty skin. Nice blue jeans and that clean smell.
“Are you on your way in or out?” I asked.
“In,” he said. I felt embarrassingly relieved that he wasn’t about to walk away for the second time.
“Did you not have to work?”
“I’m translating a condom information leaflet,” he shrugged.
“It’s not life and death.” He got some crisps out of his rucksack and offered me the bag.
I took one, even though this was something I’d never normally do.
I heard myself admitting this to him, and he laughed again.
“You can give the crisp back if it’s going to stress you out. ”
“No, I can handle this.” Salt and vinegar. That felt right for him.
“OK then, Doctor Carrie. Another?”
I took it. A porter walked past, wheeling a tiny old man who was swearing vehemently at nobody.
After they’d passed, Johan stretched out his legs and I asked why he was translating condom leaflets.
He said it was an occasional job he had for a Swedish personal care company.
He also did painting and decorating and taught scuba diving at a pool in Soho—“And a few other things, too.” All to support his sporadic and badly paid main job as an underwater archaeologist.
“As a what?!”
“A marine archaeologist. I dig old things up, like any archaeologist, but I do it under the sea.”
“What a job!”
He took some more crisps. “Ha. Well, yes. And also no. I spend quite a lot of time hoovering the sea floor, in truth. I mean, obviously there are exciting moments, but a lot of it is scraping mud in poor visibility, in the very short window you have before you have to go back up to the surface to depressurize and let someone else take over. And then you have to wait several hours until you can go back down there to spend another two hours scraping around in the cold. In spite of all of this, I love it.”
“Oh. In my mind’s eye you were diving off the east coast of Mexico, uncovering submerged Spanish gold.
And when you were on land you were sitting in a rattan chair under a tree, wearing a crisp white shirt, being interviewed by journalists from all over the world about your finds.
You were possibly being considered for an award,” I added.
“Wow. How was my salary?”
“Enormous.”
He nodded slowly. “My last job was off the coast near Bournemouth. We lifted two gravestones from the seabed. The water was eight degrees and I was paid two hundred pounds for the day.”
“Eight degrees?”
He chuckled. “I’m Swedish. I know a thing or two about cold. Although I won’t pretend it isn’t nicer to dive in warmer water. I trained in Thailand.”
“To do your job?”
“No, just to dive. But I had an archaeology degree and—well, it’s a long story, but it all sort of came together. Except it also didn’t. There’s only a few people who can do this as their main source of income, and I am not yet one of them. But I will be.”
“Of course.”
He turned and smiled right at me. “But until it can pay the bills, I’ve got plenty of other ways of making money. Please, tell me more about you. Have you ever dived? Do you know Mexico well? What kind of doctor are you?”
“I’m training to be a surgeon,” I said, taking another crisp. I’d been doing this two years now, but I still loved how that sounded. “And I haven’t ever dived because I’d freak out, and, no, I’ve never been to Mexico, sadly.”
“What kind of surgeon?”
“Well, I’m still at the beginning, really.
I’m twenty-six. But I already know I want to do this bit.
” I pointed at my upper abdomen. “I’m on colorectal at the moment, but I start a rotation in upper GI—gastrointestinal—in a couple of weeks.
That’s what I plan to specialize in. Maybe oesophago-gastric cancer. It’s early days, though.”
“Twenty-six isn’t too early to know what you want, Doctor Carrie. Although aren’t surgeons called Mr. or Mrs. in the UK?”
“A relic from history that we now cling to as a badge of honor. It’s ridiculous, really. I’m Dr. Cole for now, but if I’ve passed my MRCS exams then yes, you may call me Miss Cole, if you wish.”
Johan considered this. “I’ll stick with Carrie Cole,” he said after a moment. “It’s stronger. Anyway, tell me about your training, before you have to head back in.”
So I did. Ambulances wailed in and out; taxis dropped off patients, relatives, staff; medical couriers delivered bloods and specimens; and I told this stranger about the past eight years of my life and my plans for the next six, until I got my CCT.
He listened, fascinated, throughout the whole thing.
And then, because I couldn’t stop, I found myself telling him about my idea to delay my registrar training for a year, either to take a VSO role in Indonesia or a trauma fellowship in Johannesburg.
About how I was beginning to lean in favor of Johannesburg.
“But…” he said.
“But what?”
“There’s a big but in there.”
“Oh. Well, maybe…”
He smiled.
“I’m just a bit torn. I…I want the Johannesburg job because I’d probably get to the kind of trauma work that only seldom comes up in London. Gunshots, for example. It’d be an incredible learning experience…” I broke off. “I’m sorry. Can I make clear that I don’t actually want anyone to get shot?”
“Noted.”
“But the one in Indonesia…I’d be helping people who usually have no access to surgery, or even medicine. People living in rural communities hundreds of miles from hospitals. And that’s surely got to be more important than my own career development.”
Johan listened without comment.
“My mum’s a medical activist, so I’ve been hearing half my life about medical impoverishment in places like Indonesia, and I’ve always felt helpless, listening to her…
But now here’s an opportunity to do something about it.
The daily death rate for treatable problems like appendicitis, for example, which is an operation I can actually do, is terrible. I could really help.”
He nodded, crumpling up the crisp packet.
“And I’m not just trying to please my mother. It’s important to me, too. So I’m genuinely torn.” I breathed out, suddenly, laughing. “And this is textbook me. Getting worked up choosing between two jobs I haven’t even applied for, let alone been offered.”
“Let it all out, Carrie Cole.” He paused. “My best friend grew up with activist parents. I have some idea what you’ll have been up against with your mum.”
“Two? Christ. One was tiring enough.”
“I saw him get dragged into all sorts of things he didn’t ask to be part of. And, yes, all for the greater good—that was never in doubt. But sometimes kids just want to kick balls and tell fart jokes. They don’t really care about causes.”
He was gazing over at the Royal Mail building, a dank, utilitarian block surrounded by red vans.
“How’s his relationship with his parents these days?”
“He’s dead, actually,” Johan said after a pause.
“Got hit by a bus in Gothenburg two weeks after he started university. His mum started sobbing in the middle of the eulogy, got down on her knees by the coffin and cried, again and again, Why? Why couldn’t we just let him be?
It is interesting—bittersweet, is that the word? ”
“Yes.”
“Bittersweet, then—for me to meet someone whose childhood was probably similar.”
“I’m so sorry about your friend.”
“Thank you. Me too.”
There was a long silence. I didn’t try to fill it.
I just sat next to him, thinking about all the other activist families I’d met when I was young.
Had those kids really been used as pawns?
Had Maya and I? Certainly, Maya and Dad thought so.
I’d always felt it to be more complicated, but then another birthday would pass without Mum remembering to call me and the whole thing felt harder to defend.
“Crisps,” Johan said. He took out another packet.
“I eat a lot of them.” He opened them, offered me one, then took a handful.
“That was a dark story—I’m sorry. And you having an activist parent has nothing to do with which job you should take.
Johannesburg, Jakarta, Jerusalem…” He smiled.
“Whoever gets you, I imagine they’ll be very lucky. ”
“You don’t know that.”
He held my gaze. “Sure.”
I didn’t look away. Neither did he. My body had never responded to a man in this way.
After a moment, my bleeper went off.
We both stood up and, without a word, Johan started walking with me toward the hospital entrance, as if we were two friends on a stroll.
Above us, the sky was a bowl of cold blue, silvered sun warmed our faces, and somewhere in Whitechapel Market a loud burst of Arabic music erupted.
When we looked around to see what was happening, we couldn’t discern any reason other than someone having a good time.
I watched the steam of our breath mingle in the freezing air and had a sudden, mad impulse to kiss him. I settled instead for another crisp before he folded the packet into a rocket shape and shot it into a bin.
At reception, I called up to be told I was needed on the ward. While I waited for the lift he showed me a video of him jumping off a large metal boat into freezing water. I found it desperately attractive but made sure to ask sensible questions about the archaeological finds.
Johan called the lift again and leaned against the wall, smiling at me. I didn’t look away, but it was confusing. Why was he interested in me? What did I have to offer a man like him?
“Well, Carrie Cole,” he said eventually. Then, as suddenly as he’d started smiling, he stopped. Silently he reached out a hand, his right hand, and it hovered in the air just by my neck. “You have something on your skin,” was what he said. “Just there.”
My hand went to my neck, but I kept looking at him, and something awoke in me as we stood there in lift lobby 4C, on a Friday morning in January. Something essential, something animal happened to my body.
All I knew was his gaze, focused on the place where my neck met my shoulder. I imagined him reaching his hand just a bit farther and touching me, removing whatever it was, and I knew that was what he was thinking about, too.
I imagined his mouth there.
A deep need flooded my pelvis, my legs, the nerves in my fingertips. I had to back away to stop myself moving forward to make contact with his outstretched hand.
“Are you allowed to see me?” he asked simply. “Outside of here. Are there rules?”
“There are rules. Yes. And I don’t think they’re in our favor.” There was no use pretending not to understand.
Dell had emailed her cousin at the GMC even though I’d told her not to.
He’d replied to say that even though “the man” was not a patient, relative, or friend, it was a bit of a gray area because he’d met “the female doctor” through the context of the hospital.
Certainly “the female doctor” was not at liberty to contact him socially using a phone number he had left for the ward staff.
Best to avoid, he wrote. Just like that. Best to avoid.
“Right,” Johan said quietly. “The thing is, that doesn’t really work for me.”
“Me neither.”
We stood watching each other, a gap of just two feet between us. “Carrie Cole…” he said softly.
My bleeper went off again.
Robotically, I turned and walked away toward the stairwell. I didn’t have a plan. I just knew that I couldn’t stand there a moment longer.
He didn’t call my name or follow me, because he knew it too.