AS FAR AS THE Prof was concerned, the Cancellations Crisis, and the martyrdom of Mrs Watt, were over the minute she had walked out of the doctors’ office with Emma and left Goldblatt behind.
She sent Emma away when they reached her office, and as soon as the door was closed she sat down and went over everything in her mind. It had been a short crisis but an intense one, and the Prof felt drained and exhausted. She also felt a sense of lingering uncertainty about the way she had succeeded in bringing it to an end so abruptly.
It had obviously been a master stroke to have a talk with Dr Goldblatt, but even in her wildest dreams the Prof wouldn’t have imagined that it could bring such comprehensive success. How had she managed it? Wasn’t there something more she should have done, some definitive act of administrative genius? The Prof could remember no such act. She could remember only a morbid haze of despondency that had become thicker every time Goldblatt had opened his mouth. And then he had mentioned a patient called Mrs Watt who had spoken to Margaret Hayes, and the Prof had ordered Emma to manipulate a bed for her. That was a definitive act. But it was a very particular type of definitive act. Very specific. Very personalized. It wasn’t exactly a definitive act of administrative genius. Yet it had worked, hadn’t it? That was what mattered. But could it really have been so easy to lift the terrible cloud of Margaret Hayes’s disapproval, which had hung over her like a violent electrical storm waiting to break?
The Prof had a niggling feeling that there was some small but important matter she had forgotten to deal with, some light in the horrible mausoleum of the Cancellations Crisis that she had forgotten to switch off before locking the door and leaving it behind for ever. But what was the use of brooding about it? She wasn’t going back in there to check, not unless someone dragged her kicking and screaming. The Prof determinedly set her mind not to brood. The niggling feeling soon went. A few minutes of intense contemplation of the Scale was enough to drive it out, together with any last doubts that may have been hiding behind it.
She gazed gratefully at the Scale. The morning, which had started so unpromisingly with Dr Goldblatt in a quagmire of cancellations, had turned into a day full of hope and anticipation. It was without question one of those days when the Scale looked more full than empty.
The Prof experienced a wonderful, cathartic feeling. She was aware of a wave of exuberance and elation building up in her, and she waited expectantly for it to peak and carry her away. It was a shame she had told Emma to leave. She was never more capable or incisive than when being carried away on a wave of exuberance and elation, and she felt that Emma, who displayed little exuberance and was rarely elated, should have the opportunity to benefit from these waves when they came. There was much that Emma had to learn if she were ever to make a successful Prof in her own right. And the Prof had decided that Emma should one day become a successful Prof in her own right, if only because the success of such a protégé would be a vindication, perhaps the last and most outstanding, of the Prof’s own successful profdom.
The Prof allowed herself a moment of contented reflection. Now that the crisis was safely behind her, she could indulge in a sensible modicum of congratulation. As she thought about it, she realized that she had achieved a number of important things.
For a start, she had humiliated Emma, who was obviously the person who had foolishly written all those names in that awful book that Goldblatt had insisted on showing her. The Prof had recognized her handwriting at once. The fact that the girl couldn’t bring herself to admit it merely proved how great her humiliation had been. Humiliation was just as important a part of Emma’s education as exuberance and elation, and the Prof jealously guarded her right to inflict it on her, preferably at least once a fortnight, although not necessarily in front of Dr Goldblatt. Humiliation in front of Dr Goldblatt was probably worth two normal humiliations. The Prof opened the diary on her desk and glanced through it to see when the next humiliation was due. She almost picked up her fountain pen to make a note to cancel it. But she didn’t. It would do no harm for Emma to be humiliated in front of Dr Goldblatt occasionally. The Prof closed her diary, driving the idea of such an extravagant concession from her mind.
In the second place, the Prof had organized the admission of a patient called Mrs Watt, who obviously needed urgent care, and whom Dr Goldblatt would probably have left to die in the street if she hadn’t intervened. The Prof was fond of opera and found herself thinking of La Bohème, which she had seen at Covent Garden only a couple of weeks earlier, and the wonderfully romantic death of Mimi, the opera’s heroine, in a garret. Perhaps, if she hadn’t saved her, Mrs Watt would have died alone in a romantic garret as well. But she had saved her, that was the point. And a more important point was that her rescue of poor Mrs Watt would be a priceless point in her favour with Margaret Hayes.
The Prof opened her diary again. She wrote MRS WATT in big letters across the page to make sure she remembered the name of this important patient so she could nonchalantly remind Margaret Hayes about her the next time they spoke. Underneath MRS WATT she wrote Urgent Admission. The Prof gazed at the page contentedly. Seeing Mrs Watt’s name there in black ink refreshed and strengthened the impression of all that she had achieved in overcoming the crisis. She could have gazed at Mrs Watt’s name with perfect satisfaction for an hour.
And in the third place, she had stood up to Dr Goldblatt.
The Prof closed the diary sharply.
Standing up to Dr Goldblatt gave her immense satisfaction, more than she would have got from the salvation of a hundred dying Watts crawling up the hospital steps. But that was precisely the problem. There was something not quite right about a professor getting satisfaction from standing up to a registrar, and a locum registrar at that. And there was nothing at all right about the nerve-racking apprehension she felt at the thought of ever having to do it again.
From the day Goldblatt had refused to manipulate beds she had felt that there was something dangerous, reckless, and even unstable about the boy. And that was the first day he had joined the unit! None of her other registrars had ever refused. She had asked him nicely. The Prof still found the memory of his voice on the phone that day almost too difficult to deal with and she tried to think about it as infrequently as she could. Unfortunately, that wasn’t infrequently enough. She should have nipped it in the bud then and there, on the very first day. Manipulate beds when you’re told to, she should have said to him, or get off my unit!
That’s what she should have said, like Dirty Harry or somebody.
The Prof had to admit to herself that she felt intimidated by the boy. In fact, if she was perfectly honest with herself – which she was certainly capable of being, of course, if the occasion called for it – she had to admit that he intimidated her down to the marrow. Especially after Emma reported back on that dreadful lunch they had all had following the unfortunate episode with that poor lady who didn’t get her echocardiogram, when Goldblatt had apparently threatened to put in a complaint about her. The Prof had felt a spasm in her heart when Emma told her about that, and for a moment she had seriously wondered whether she was having a heart attack. That incident was even more intimidating than a refusal to manipulate beds, and the Prof therefore had to try even harder not to think about it. The very notion of someone saying such a thing out loud was too dreadful for words.
For a long time after that the Prof had wondered whether she should say something to Goldblatt, or pretend that she knew nothing about it. She could pretend she knew nothing about it because, officially, she did know nothing about it. Who would ever guess that Emma reported such things to her? Or all the other things Emma reported?
She decided to say nothing. The fact that she knew she had brought the whole thing on herself, in a way that she still found largely inexplicable, certainly helped with the decision. Who knew what else she might bring upon herself if she chose to reopen the terrifying Pandora’s box out of which Goldblatt had leapt on that ward round? Or if she chose to open anything else with him, for that matter? By the time she decided this she had been thinking about it for so long that she didn’t really have a choice anyway. It would have seemed odd to bring it up after a month. Another chance to nip it in the bud gone, she thought bitterly.
And here he was, this very morning, suggesting that patients could just as well get their Sorain infusions in any old hospital in any old corner of the country. She had almost choked in shock! Did he understand nothing, nothing, of what it took to create and maintain a centre of excellence? Of course he did. He wasn’t unintelligent. Far from it. He was rather too intelligent, it seemed, for his own good. No, it was nothing if not another naked attempt to humiliate and intimidate her.
Well, there was only one way to deal with someone like that, and that was to stand up to him – no matter how terrifying the prospect. The bud, which had become a full-blown carnivorous flower, had to be nipped. And hadn’t she done it! Hadn’t she just! She had shown him who was boss that morning. She had gone on demanding the name of the person who had booked all those admissions until he been forced to back down with some pathetic complaint about the pressure of the job. The pressure of the job! Ha! That was an admission of defeat if ever the Prof had heard one.
The Prof lingered over the memory and savoured the unwholesome satisfaction it gave her. She very much doubted, she told herself, that Dr Goldblatt would refuse to manipulate beds for her again. Not that she would ask him. He had had his chance and now he had lost it. She was almost inclined to be grateful that Margaret Hayes had precipitated this crisis so that, in solving it, she had had the opportunity to show the boy comprehensively who was in charge. It would be a long time before Dr Goldblatt would be able to intimidate Professor Small again!
The Prof felt she was very close to convincing herself that all of this was true and immediately decided to think about something else before she changed her mind.
She took out a draft of a paper that Bolkovsky, her Russian post-doc, was supposed to be writing, and began to read it. The spelling was atrocious. The Prof suspected that Bolkovsky refused to use the spell checker on his computer just to spite her. He was a horrible, foul-mouthed man with bad breath, and the Prof often wished that she didn’t need to keep him.
Suddenly she felt deflated. She had always been surrounded by horrible men, ever since her first day as a medical student in Liverpool. Blunt, blustering, blundering men. When she looked at Tom de Witte, for instance, she wondered how someone like that could possibly exist. So big, hearty, and stupid, he was like a massive object made of rubber. With a penis. It would never have occurred to him that he wasn’t supremely good at what he did, whether as a bronchoscopist, which was his speciality, or as a gastroscopist or uroscopist or proctoscopist. Or a milkman or a baker for that matter. Boys were like that. Or some boys were. So were some girls, or at least they pretended to be. Andrea herself pretended to be. But she wasn’t. Yet Tom de Witte was. He never pretended to be anything. He was too big, hearty, and stupid for that.
Andrea Small had been through two husbands. The first was a very young mistake. The second was an older mistake. She had no desire to make it three. She didn’t even know why she continued seeing Tom de Witte. In fact, officially, they both pretended they weren’t seeing each other. Andrea didn’t know why they did that either, and sometimes she wondered whether she should be outraged about it, on the assumption that they were doing it because in some way he was ashamed of her. But to become outraged over it would mean admitting that Tom could be ashamed of her, which would mean admitting that there was something which could, even theoretically, be regarded as shameful about her, which was even more outrageous than letting Tom de Witte simply get on with hiding the fact that they were seeing each other in the first place.
Anyway, Andrea Small wasn’t altogether sure that she wanted to admit that she was seeing Tom de Witte. Maybe it was she who was ashamed of him! She would have liked to see the look on his big red face if she had told him that. It would never have occurred to him. It should have, since he had already been divorced once himself. But as far as Andrea was aware, Tom had never been guilty of the sin of introspection. Andrea, on the other hand, often felt as if she were drowning in introspection. At times like these, for example.
She threw a glance at Bolkovsky’s horrible paper. She pushed it further away. She could hardly bear to read it.
The Prof looked up. The Scale was watching her. Sometimes it seemed as if the two 0s of the 1800 at the top were a pair of big, owl-like eyes that could see right through her. Right through the professorial façade and into the core of her being.
She gazed at the number, with its probing, owl-like eyes. It mocked her. ‘I am unattainable,’ it seemed to be hooting at her. ‘Unattainable.’ Not only was it unattainable, but deep in her heart Andrea Small expected that one day the tide would turn and the red column of Fuertler’s patients would begin inexorably to slip down the wall.
She stared at the Scale, pondering it in despair. The Scale was stuck. It had been stuck at 960 for months. Perhaps the turning point had been reached...
Suddenly she shook her head. ‘No, Andrea,’ she said to herself, possibly aloud. ‘Pull yourself out of it!’
She remembered how she had been feeling earlier, before she had picked up Bolkovsky’s appallingly spelled paper. Elated. Exuberant.
‘Come on, Andrea! Pull yourself together!’
She took a deep breath. And another, trying to recover that feeling.
‘You showed him, didn’t you? Well? Think of that!’
She thought of that. She had taught the boy a lesson. She had shown him who was boss. Was that worth nothing? After this, he’d respect her. He wouldn’t be so quick to turn down the chance to manipulate a bed. If she ever gave him one, which she wouldn’t. He wouldn’t be so quick to talk about making a complaint.
The Prof looked up at the Scale again. Yes, Scale. Strong Scale. Good Scale. He’d respect her now.
And the Prof rushed out of the office, hoping that she would succeed in still believing it even when she came back.
On the seventh floor, Emma Burton was sitting in her bathroom-turned-office, on the phone to her sister, who was at her desk in the City. Emma had rung her as soon as the Prof shooed her away. She would be seeing her sister again that evening, when she got back to the flat they shared, but this couldn’t wait.
It was weeks since Emma had stopped talking to Goldblatt. It hadn’t been easy. It was hard not to talk to someone you were supposed to be working with. Not just working with, but supervising. Sometimes you felt foolish. You had to eat your lunch in your own tiny little office, where there were never any newspapers to read. If you didn’t, you had to listen to him talk about where your blood went when you flushed and ask whether he could stroke you. And was it worth it? Had he done a single thing to persuade her to start talking to him again? No, he had gone on just as before, humiliating her, deriding her, undermining her with the Prof. Emma saw now how foolish she had been to expect anything else, how pointless it had been to give him so much time to make amends. Was a person like that even capable of caring whether other people talked to him or not?
Yes, it was all clear to her now.
Glancing secretly up from her shoes, she had seen the way Goldblatt had allowed the blame to drift directly towards her during the meeting with the Prof, letting the Prof’s question hang for so long that the air had become almost too heavy to breathe. He hadn’t let slip a single chance to emphasize her responsibility for the cancellations shambles on the unit. Emma shuddered to think what else he would have said had she not stumbled on the secret meeting, which only someone without a shred of decency would have arranged with the Prof behind her back. And anyway, what was the sum total of her responsibility? She had booked the patients in as the Prof demanded. Was that some kind of crime?
She laughed bitterly. On the other end of the line, her sister, who had heard it all a hundred times before – apart from the events of that morning, which so far she had heard only once – supportively murmured something in disbelief. She was a very loyal sister. Being an accountant, she also had a high boredom threshold, which helped.
Emma had tried to be welcoming. Hadn’t she done everything she could to integrate Goldblatt into the team and not make him feel uncomfortable just because she was the SR and he was only the registrar and would have to take orders from her? But it was too late now. He had had his chances. She had given him more than his fair share.
‘Much more,’ said Emma’s sister, whose loyalty often got the better of her judgement.
She had been waiting for Goldblatt to be dealt with in the appropriate way. After all, it wasn’t her job to put him in his place.
‘But you are the SR,’ her sister pointed out. ‘So you’re senior to him.’
‘But it’s not my job!’ retorted Emma, wondering if everyone was against her.
‘Whose job is it?’ asked her sister.
‘The Prof’s,’ said Emma.
‘Of course,’ said her sister.
But the Prof hadn’t done her job. Time after time, she had refused to act.
Emma couldn’t understand it. The Prof knew what was going on, Emma made sure of that. Goldblatt had stopped turning up to her SR ward rounds, for instance. He had simply stopped coming! Emma had barely been able to believe that someone could even think of doing such a thing, and would have been too stunned to say anything to Goldblatt about it even if she had been talking to him at the time. Which she hadn’t. But she told the Prof. The Prof was just as stunned. She shook her head in disbelief for at least a minute. But in the end what did she do?
‘Nothing,’ said Emma’s sister, who knew the answer to that one.
‘Exactly!’ Nothing at all. The Prof didn’t even talk to him about it. And what about his threat to make a complaint after the ward round with Mrs Constantidis? The Prof couldn’t believe that one either, but again what did she do? In vain Emma waited for the Prof to drag Goldblatt across the carpet in the same way that she regularly dragged her across the carpet. What more did the Prof need? How much longer was she going to wait? Was there something about her carpet that meant Malcolm Goldblatt couldn’t be dragged across it?
Well, maybe the Prof could afford to wait, but Emma couldn’t. Today’s meeting had shown her that. Emma couldn’t afford to ignore him any longer, treating him to the silence that was more than he deserved. She couldn’t afford to sit around as a target while he took shots at her. His aim was perfectly clear to her now. Turn the Prof against her, and he could have her job for himself. Where would she be then? Without the Prof’s support, how would she ever find a place to do an MD? And without an MD, she’d be the one doing one locum job after the next.
‘I need that MD, Kate,’ she said to her sister.
‘I know you do.’
‘I’m sick of being nice to him.’
‘He doesn’t deserve it.’
Emma’s eyes narrowed. ‘It’s him or me, Kate. It’s not my fault. He started it. If he thinks he can stab me in the back, I’ll do the same to him.’
‘What are you going to do?’
Emma eyes narrowed further. She glanced calculatingly around the office, with its piles of illegally secreted notes and its collection of missing mugs. ‘I’m going to tell the Prof the truth.’
‘I thought you already had.’
‘No, I mean the truth. What he really thinks of her.’
‘Do you know what he really thinks of her?’
‘Of course I do.’
Emma had learned a lot since she had joined the unit. She still failed to recognize that it was her defects that the Prof most valued about her, and consequently remained in a constant state of anxiety and readiness to panic, but there were other things she had begun to recognize about the Prof after all the time that she and Andrea Small had spent roaming the hospital wards together. At the start, Emma’s sycophancy had been instinctive, but by now it had become far more knowing. She had begun to see that the Prof craved, needed, demanded to be loved. Well, Emma could do love, as much as was needed. She could do obsequiousness, adulation, abject gratitude, and servility as well. In fact, they came naturally to her.
But Emma had also begun to understand something else, something equally important: what the Prof feared. What she wilfully blinded herself to, what she couldn’t bear to hear. Paradoxically, it was Goldblatt who had shown her that – or if not Goldblatt himself, the Prof’s reaction to him. Her behaviour on the ward round with Mrs Constantidis had been an eye opener. After that, Emma had watched the Prof ever more closely, recognizing the signs of her fear in every truncated glance, in every tittered half joke.
With that realization had come a form of power. A power so terrible, so awesome, so potentially destructive – to herself – that Emma hadn’t dared wield it. But if the stakes are high enough, the risks a person will take are commensurate.
She told her sister what she planned to say.
There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line.
‘It’s true!’ said Emma. ‘I’m not saying anything that isn’t.’
‘I’m not saying you are.’
‘So?’
‘I just wonder...’
‘What?’
‘If it’s wise.’
‘Do you think I haven’t thought about it!’snapped Emma
‘When are you going to do it?’
‘Tomorrow morning. The Prof’s asked me to meet her. We’ve got the Grand Round next week and she wants to discuss it. I’ll tell her then. I’ll find a way to get it into the conversation.’
‘Emma,’ said her sister tentatively, ‘I know you’ve thought about it, but... don’t you think it’s a bit risky?’
Emma laughed bitterly. ‘What choice have I got?’