Chapter Twenty-Three
Twenty-three.
My video meeting took place the next morning.
There were four of them on screen: four people interested only in the damage I could potentially cause their hospital trust. Two were older men, one of whom called our wedding a “drunken backpackers’ affair.
” There was a female lawyer and an HR assistant with a headset, transcribing as we went.
My heart raced as they moved through the formalities. I thought back to the day I’d first met Johan, when I’d raged at the policeman. My near miss prescribing the wrong medication to a post-op patient when Johan went to dive in the North Sea. And now this: ten thousand times worse.
I had never had any trouble before I’d met him. Not so much as a speck on my record. Was this the penalty for falling in love?
For a brief moment, as the lawyer explained why the meeting needed to take place, I imagined cutting Johan off. It was a dizzying prospect. Simply resecting this nightmare from my life, like a tumor.
—
The severity of my situation, they told me, hung on the extent to which I had known about Johan’s sideline in drug smuggling.
That, at least, was easy: I hadn’t had the faintest idea.
But when I began to add that I was struggling to believe he’d actually done it, Mum actually kicked me.
“Carrie’s happy to give consent for you to access her phone, email, anything else you need to be satisfied that she had no knowledge whatsoever of the situation,” she said.
And when I interrupted to say that I did not give any such consent, she spoke over me again.
She told them that, having investigated the situation fully herself, she could see there was no evidence whatsoever that Johan’s clandestine actions would have any impact on my ability to provide safe medical care.
She was singing from her own hymn sheet now.
“There’s been a fair amount of press in Sweden,” the less offensive of the two men said.
“But only two small pieces here in the UK. Thankfully, none of them seem to know who you are or what you do for a living, and you haven’t been pictured—there’s just a passing mention of how Kullberg was arrested on a Thai island where he’d been having a ‘holiday fling’ with ‘a young British woman.’ ”
A holiday fling.
“But this is dangerous. The anti-NHS press will go out of their way to blow this up, if they catch on. British surgeon fights for drug-dealer husband’s rights in Thai jail, or some such. The possibilities are as endless as they are grim.”
“Can I ask how you found out about Carrie?” Mum asked. “If it hasn’t been in the press?”
“We received an anonymous email,” the lawyer said.
“From a generic email address; it didn’t have a proper name.
We can’t share it with you for obvious reasons, but it was a surprising communication.
It was written as if wishing to protect you from further harm, Carrie, rather than trying to cause you trouble—it didn’t seem hostile. ”
I looked at Mum. “But who would do that?”
“Not me,” Mum said. “If that’s what you’re thinking. I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“We thought you might know, Carrie,” the lawyer said. “It seems strange that someone would contact your workplace but not tell the press.”
“Could it have been Johan himself? Trying to protect you?” Mum asked me.
“No. He has no means of contacting anyone.”
“Of course,” Mum said. “Then who?”
We both thought about this until the lawyer spoke again. “We’ll need to review this internally before you can start working here as a registrar next week. However, I think I can say on behalf of everyone here that we’d be a lot happier if you came home without any further delay.”
“But I can’t. He’s—”
Mum interrupted. “She will come home. I’ll make sure of it.”
I turned, angrily, but she held up a hand. “Excuse us a moment,” she said, muting our microphone. Outside there was some sort of celebratory procession passing through the street. Bells, drums, chanting, laughter, tendrils of incense snaking through the window. Mum turned off our camera, too.
“How dare you!” I said. “I am twenty-seven years old. I—”
“And you don’t know anything,” my mother butted in.
“You may be a trainee surgeon, Carrie, but make no mistake: you’re still a child.
You moved to medical school from a tiny village in Devon.
You have had one job, you’ve barely traveled, you have no life experience outside the walls of a hospital. Do yourself a favor and trust me.”
I stared at her, open-mouthed, until the thought suddenly came: She’s right.
“I’ve never worked in criminal defense,” Mum went on.
“It’s not my thing. But I’ve helped enough people in trouble to know how this is going to end for Johan.
I’m afraid these people are right, Carrie.
You really do have to go home before this gets worse.
You have to leave your feelings behind and start looking at this from a practical and strategic angle. ”
“Mum! What’s wrong with you? He needs help! He must have been coerced into this! He’s really frightened!”
She took a long breath. “Carrie, you know how much justice matters to me. You know what I’m willing to sacrifice for the greater good. But he—Johan…” She stopped.
“Johan what? He’s a lost cause?”
“I think so,” she said, and her voice was sorrowful.
“I wish I could have visited him myself, tried to drag it out of him. I’m reliant only on what you and Prawat have told me, but it seems to me that he’s in very serious trouble.
And, significantly, he’s not trying to fight it.
He’s asked us not to fight it. He’d only be doing that if he was following instructions.
From people who don’t welcome third-party involvement.
The sort of people neither you nor I want to come up against.”
“But…”
“Carrie. Your career is your life. It always has been. And I can relate to that. Are you going to throw it away for a man? A man you’ve known for only a few months?”
Before I had a chance to speak, Mum unmuted and told them I’d be coming home in the next forty-eight hours.
Once again, my mother was right here by my side, and once again I was completely alone. I sat quietly in my chair, like the child they all believed me to be.
A smiling waiter brought up a tray of room service dinner soon after. It sat on a stand in the corner while we finished the video call. A yellow flower had been placed cheerfully on each folded napkin, with a note saying, We wish you joy with your meal!
—
“I have some more difficult news,” Mum said as we returned to the visitor center the next morning. The rains had returned; I was sweating under a plastic poncho and my shoes were already soaked through.
“Prawat called me last night, after the meeting with your hospital team. I’m sorry, but he says it’s not safe for him to dig around any longer. He was ‘paid a visit’ last night, whatever that means. He says nobody harmed him, but he won’t lock horns with those sorts of people. He’s out.”
I carried on walking. One foot in front of the other. Rain hammered on my poncho, which was not up to the job at hand.
“If I’m honest, Carrie, I’m out of my depth, too,” Mum said. “I can take on any number of government officials, but I don’t know anything about crime rings, and I don’t know how to help Johan if he’s sticking with this one. Prawat is being sensible. We should follow his example.”
I said nothing. I should have seen this coming. I should have known Mum would only engage if the situation enabled her to win.
We passed the craft shop, which apparently sold polished wooden furniture made by the prisoners. It never seemed to be open.
“Carrie, I want you to fly home tomorrow morning. You have to get out of here. You have to go back to your life.”
I imagined having a fridge again, filled with fresh food; music coming out of Johan’s radio; the bike he’d bought me to commute to St. Mary’s Hospital. Autumn creeping in with regretful yellow light, the days rapidly shortening. Returning to my life—our life—without him.
Tears filled my eyes, and I let them fall. I cried for Johan, for us, but above all for the person I’d believed myself to be. An adult woman with agency in her own life. A woman who understood, finally, what it meant to be truly happy.
—
Johan had a black eye, a split lip, and nasty cuts near his hairline.
He didn’t pick up the phone at first. He just looked at me warily, as if weighing up the pros and cons of talking.
“Are you OK?” I asked, when he finally did.
He half nodded, half shrugged.
“What’s happened?”
“Your mum’s friend continued to poke around, even though I told you to stop him. So they fired a warning shot.”
I blanched. “Someone attacked you?”
He snorted. “Trust me,” he said. “This was not an attack. At most it was a polite warning.”
“Oh God, Johan. Are you sure it was because of Prawat?”
“Very sure.”
“I…OK. He was paid a visit, too. He’s done, if that helps.”
Johan nodded. “Good.”
“How are you feeling? How are you doing, inside there?” I pointed at his head.
“Not good.”
He looked up at the greasy brown sky behind me, emptying rain, the odd thunderous rumble rolling through.
At that point, I cracked. “Could you at least have the fucking courtesy to look at me?” I snapped. “Even for half a minute?”
Johan actually jumped in his chair.
“You still haven’t told me anything, Johan.
Not a fucking thing about what you’ve done or why.
I’m a doctor. My entire adult life has been about helping people to live.
And yet here you are, smuggling some shitty, miserable drug over the border for a bunch of thugs you refuse to talk about.
My job is in jeopardy, my life is in shreds, I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I don’t know what to do.
Will you please just fucking well talk to me? ”
He stared at me.
“Not least about the many lies you must have told me? How long they’ve been going on? Perhaps you could tell me if anything that happened between us was real! And, indeed, who the fuck you actually are?”
I was shouting now. People were looking. I didn’t care.
Still, he didn’t speak. Sedimented anger moved in my abdomen, but there was fear, too. I realized I didn’t actually want to hear what he had to say.
After a long pause, he switched the handset to his other ear.
“I am going to say this one more time, Carrie. I cannot talk to you. No amount of shouting can change that.” He sighed.
“Look. We’ve been seeing each other three months.
And it’s been good. Very good, at times.
But it’s over now. There is no other outcome, with me in here and you out there. ”
“I…What?”
There was a large dent in the grille in front of me, as if someone had thrown a stool against it. I felt some sympathy for whoever had done this.
“Listen to me, Carrie.” He spoke slowly. “I don’t want you to visit me. And I’m not just trying to save your skin—I’m done with this. Us. It was fun, and I did love you, but I’ve got bigger fish to fry now. You need to go home.”
I tried to speak, but he carried on.
“If you visit again, I’ll refuse to come out. I know you’re stubborn but, Christ, will you just wake up? I’m truly sorry all this happened, but it’s over.”
Beside me, a young girl in pink shorts jumped down from her mother’s lap and started skipping around the cracked concrete of the yard, under the cover of the overhanging roof.
Beyond her, the rain drummed down. Her father, sitting behind the barred window next to Johan, watched her, smiling, before suddenly covering his face with his hands. His shoulders shook.
I felt a sob rising in my own chest. Johan had smuggled drugs; there was no longer any point in me trying to convince myself otherwise. But I was damned if I was going to be packed off out of the country—out of this relationship—without any explanation.
“No,” I said. “You don’t get to buy me off by just ditching me like I’m a holiday fling.”
“I’m sorry it’s come to this,” Johan said. “Truly sorry. Like I said—I did love you. I wasn’t making that up, you’re right. But we’re done.”
Then, unbelievably: “I’m going to go now,” he said. “Look after yourself, Carrie. Have a good life.”
And he meant it. He got up and walked away.
The last I ever saw of him, he was waiting with his back to me while a guard handcuffed him and unlocked a barred door. He disappeared into a dark space behind and, with that, my brief time in the sun was done.