Chapter Eight
Eight.
Johan never came back.
Deniz got through three surgeries, six weeks of physio, and an eventual discharge, but I saw nothing of him, and when I asked one of the ward nurses they said the only visitors she’d had lately had been a niece and, occasionally, an Orthodox minister.
“Not the guy who was there at the collision?” I asked casually.
The nurse smiled knowingly. “Sadly not! I think we were all hoping he’d come back, but he only came the once.”
—
Soon after Johan disappeared off the face of the earth, I found out I’d ranked eleventh nationally after my registrar interviews.
My friends had all got training numbers too and the mood was high; there were several boozy nights out.
But all I really wanted to do was find Johan and tell him, which left me feeling confused and ashamed. I barely knew the man.
“This too shall pass,” Dad said to me, often, during that time; but I didn’t want it to pass. I didn’t want to move on.
I had no idea why he’d been in Limehouse the day Deniz was hit by a motorcycle, but I went there, one gray Sunday in early March.
I wandered around some empty streets under a steely sky, then had a panini in a deserted cafe.
I walked all the way home, even though it took four hours and my feet were frozen.
But I had nowhere else to be, nobody else to see.
A solitary bird was singing as I crossed Clapham Common.
There were daffodils under the trees, and for a short while the sky brightened.
I tilted my face up to the diluted sun and stopped for a few moments, smelling the sodden, overused earth beneath my feet, traffic droning down toward Balham and Wandsworth.
From nowhere, tears came. They came and they wouldn’t stop, no matter how hard I pressed my eyes. The harder I tried to stop, the harder I cried. Thick clouds rolled back over the sun and I realized I’d trodden in dog shit.
“Why are you crying?”
I looked down. There was a boy of maybe four, five—I’d only spent a few months in paeds during my foundation training; it was hard to tell kids’ ages—with dinosaur wellies and thick glasses. He was peering up at me, curious rather than concerned.
“Oh. Ah—sorry.”
“Why are you saying sorry?”
“I don’t know.”
He stared at me a while longer. Somewhere behind him, a middle-class man was making one of those laughing pseudo-apologies that parents make.
“Adults don’t cry much,” the boy said. He was shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Did somebody make you feel sad?”
“I…well…yes, actually. Although he didn’t mean to. I think my real problem is…” I trailed off. Is that I’m lonely.
The boy stared at me again. “I need to go for a nature wee,” he told me, and with that he was off.
—
I was in Sainsbury’s, the big one near work. It was May now, and spring had finally settled itself into London; the parks full of joggers, blossom blowing in gusts, transient showers like a child’s tantrums from the sky.
I was halfway through my final rotation in core surgical training, and tomorrow would be my twenty-seventh birthday.
I was buying cake to share with the upper GI team, although I’d likely end up eating it on my own and throwing the rest in the bin.
Four of the team were off with D the rest of us were working at full throttle.
I’d just chosen a checkout when I saw him, three tills down from mine.
I stopped dead. He had a basket already on the conveyor belt and he was waiting, drumming his fingers on the chrome edge, waiting for the customer before him to finish packing her bags. He was wearing work trousers again. Work boots, a faded sweatshirt.
I stared. The man behind me asked if I was in the queue and it took me several seconds to hear what he was saying.
“No,” I told him. “I have to…No.”
I started walking toward Johan and then stopped. What was I going to do? What would I say? Would he even recognize me? It had been one hundred ten days since we stood outside that lift. But before I had time to retreat, he looked up.
He saw me straight away and he knew exactly who I was; there was no confusion. He stared at me for an unknown length of time before the skin creased around those eyes and he broke into a smile. Heeeeeeyyyyyy! he mouthed. He raised a hand.
I waved back. He mimed for me to meet him at the end of the checkouts.
In a dream, I paid for my items at another checkout. Then, him, in front of me.
“Carrie Cole,” he said levelly. “Hello.”
“Hello.” I couldn’t stop smiling.
This moment, about which I’d fantasized endlessly, was never meant to take place in a supermarket, and I was never meant to be in my on-call scrubs. It was never meant to be the day before my birthday, which I was expecting to celebrate alone. But here we were, and it was just right.
I’ve missed you was what I wanted to say, but I didn’t. Customers streamed past us on both sides, carrying bags, reading phones, trying to manage their children.
And then he said, without any preamble, “I was going to come and find you. I was always going to come. I just felt I should wait a bit longer. I didn’t want to get you into trouble.”
I said nothing.
“I called my friend who’s something senior in the NHS. He said cases like this are a bit borderline, so I’d ideally let time pass before trying to make contact. He told me I’d be best off leaving you alone altogether, in fact, but I said no.”
He said no.
“So you’ve been waiting? Since then?”
“On Thursday it will be four months from the day we met. I was going to come for you then.” He paused. “The longest four months of my life.”
I’ve never been someone who does impulsive things, and even then I had little tolerance for risk outside the operating theater. But right away, without hesitating, I said, “Where are you going? I’m coming with you.”
—
He lived a few streets away. All these months of longing for him, and he’d been less than a mile from my hospital. The day Deniz had been hit he’d been down in Limehouse painting windows for a friend who sent jobs his way from time to time. He had no more connection with Limehouse than I did.
He lived in a maisonette occupying the top two floors of a low red-brick block of ex–council flats.
From his kitchen window you could see the trees of the city farm, a Catholic church, and row upon row of sweet little houses built in the eighties.
Cherry trees beamed from the corner of each miniature street, silent except for the occasional cyclist avoiding the pollution of Whitechapel Road. It felt like a board game.
We faced each other in his warm kitchen, nakedly wanting each other, saying nothing.
“I don’t operate like this,” he said.
“Me neither.”
And then he reached out a hand and traced a finger down the side of my neck, right where he’d hovered it back in January. His face moved in and then his mouth was on my skin, just like I’d imagined. I heard myself moan.
“I really don’t want to just…” he said, into my neck.
“Me neither.” But neither of us stopped.
He slid his hands into my hair and kissed me hard, on the mouth, and I kissed him back. I don’t know how long it went on for. Seconds, minutes—longer, perhaps. But at some point we both pulled away to look at each other.
“I don’t know your surname,” was what I said. “Or how old you are.”
He smiled, fingers combing through my hair. “You want to take a patient history?”
“Maybe?”
Johan laughed. “As you wish. I don’t want to just get naked with you. Although I really, very badly want that.”
“I really very badly want that, too.” I moved away, with some effort, and sat down. “Let’s put a table between us.”
Johan looked at the table, at me, then sat down. He took a deep breath. “OK, Doctor.” He fixed his eyes on mine. “Are you a ‘Miss’ now? Did you pass your exams?”
“I did!”
“Of course you did. Well done. But I’m just going to call you Carrie Cole. It’s hotter.”
I took a long breath and tried to sort out my hair. Then I stopped, because I didn’t actually care.
“Kullberg. That’s my surname. I’m from V?ster?s, which is a town to the west of Stockholm.
My parents moved there from southern Sweden when I was ten.
Some fun facts: I drink too much chocolate milk, but so would you if they sold Pucko in this country.
I once broke my wrist. I didn’t need surgery, though, so I’ve never had an experience in your domain.
Oh, and the other job I do, which I didn’t tell you about that day, is that I am an ass model.
For a jeans brand. That’s classified information and a sign that I like you. I’m thirty.”
“An ass model? They don’t even photograph your face?”
Johan considered this for a moment, then laughed. He seemed to laugh all the time. “Are you upset on behalf of my face?”
“Yes! It’s a really good face.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I like yours, too.”
“I was brought up on imported Milo, so I’ve also got a chocolate milk habit. My maternal grandmother was Malaysian—she passed the addiction on to my mother, who passed it on to me and my sister. Have you got any of your Swedish stuff here?”
“Pucko? Yes. Want one?”
“Absolutely I do. Although nothing beats Milo.”
“You’ll see, Carrie Cole.” Johan got up, chuckling. He walked over to his fridge, got out a couple of bottles, and put one in front of me.
Then he crouched down next to my chair. “I saw you one night,” he said. “In a curry house. You were with a group of friends. Other doctors, I think. I nearly went up to you because I felt sure that that would have been OK.”
I stared at him. His finger traced slowly around that same spot on my neck and I could hardly breathe. “I was there with the very friend who’d told me I couldn’t get in contact with you. I asked if I could talk to you. He said, no. You’ve got to wait.”
“He was right,” I whispered. Nobody had touched me in this way.