11 April 2004
‘So what’s the goriest thing you’ve seen so far?’ Marilyn asks, her knife slicing through lamb so pink that blood is pooling on her plate.
Easter Sunday lunch with the in-laws-to-be, and already the interrogation is in full swing.
‘Depends a bit how you define gory? I could offer cysts, tumours, haemorrhages . . .’
I could tell you about how blood clots after it’s left the body, darker than the redcurrant jelly on your plate. Or describe the dermoid cyst we all pored over in the lab, with its own teeth and nails and impossibly long strands of blonde hair that remind me a lot of yours.
‘Yeah, but have you treated any actual patients yet?’ Marilyn’s voice is mildly contemptuous. ‘I mean, it’s been, what, four years since you started? I was dealing with clients from day one.’
‘It’s not quite four years yet. And I have helped to diagnose people, done tests. But because it’s slightly higher risk than filing people’s nails, they want to make sure we know what we’re doing.’
Marilyn doesn’t laugh but everyone else does, even her husband, Neil, who usually falls into line, however outrageous her pronouncements.
She pouts. ‘Well, we do medical enhancements too and my Botox training only took a weekend, and it’s a well-known fact beauty therapists do injectables way better than doctors.’
One reversible, trivial procedure compared to the entire canvas of the human body and all its frightening possibilities; a bucket of chardonnay has made Marilyn even more full of herself than usual.
But she’s closer to the truth than she knows. Because right now, anything seems preferable to a lifetime of doctoring. If that’s even an option for me anymore, after the nightmare of last week’s exams.
‘With respect, Marilyn,’ my mother says, in the sarcastic tone she usually reserves for me, ‘I wouldn’t trust you with anything sharper than a pair of tweezers, hen. Whereas my son is going to change the world.’
Oh, Mum, if only you knew.
Every year, I tell myself it’ll get better. My first two years were bearable, lifted by occasional moments of pure wonder. The third was tough, but after India, I thought I could stop taking the pills, be the doctor my mum wants me to be, the fiancé Kerry deserves.
I was wrong. It’s like running on a treadmill operated by a sadist. I’m keeping up with the academic side, but whenever I take a patient history, I cringe as if I am standing naked on stage, holding a banner reading ‘village idiot’. Venepuncture is the ultimate humiliation, reducing my poor victims to tears in my doomed missions to find a decent vein.
My contemporaries laugh about their own incompetence, but they are all more capable than I am. Laura has a mosquito’s ability to find blood, while Wilcox charms everyone, even the matrons, into doing his dirty work. Plus, he always seems to find the question that unravels a patient’s condition, however mysterious or obscure.
‘Move over, George Clooney. There’s a new doctor in town,’ he says after every correct diagnosis, and the nurses keep laughing, falling for his lines and tumbling into his bed.
But I can’t be too hard on Wilcox, because if he’d never introduced me to the uppers and the sleeping pills, I would have crashed out in year one.
‘. . . but I’d love him to be a cardiac surgeon. Or a wonderful, warm GP, the kind of man who takes care of generations of families, and always has time for someone in need.’ My mother is talking, and even though I zoned out of the beginning, I see pride in her eyes as she shares her ambitions for me.
My only ambition is not to kill anyone.
Mum is tipsy as we support her crossing the road back to the bungalow, her soft Scottish accent suddenly more muscular. She goes straight to bed.
Kerry pours us both a glass of white wine and we sit next to each other on the sofa. My hand hovers over the remote control and I am so close to turning on the telly, to emulate the loud chatter and disagreement that filled the Smith family dining room.
No. Stop being a coward. She deserves advance warning of what is coming.
‘Kerry. I don’t know if I can do this.’
‘Hmm? Do what?’ She’s picked up the Radio Times, and is scanning the columns for something to watch. Her brow furrows, trying to focus despite being a bit drunk. She looks adorable, and I want to kiss her, not hurt her.
But I must, for both our sakes.
‘I don’t know if I’ll ever be a good enough doctor.’ My deepest fear, expressed in one sentence. Not only a fear, but reality. Other people might have forgotten what really happened on millennium night, but I haven’t. I don’t think Kerry has either.
My words hang in the room like the stench of blood-darkened melaena stools, and I wait to see if she’ll choose to ignore them. The Easter Bunny in Mum’s home-made nest decoration stares at me with its crossed button eyes. Strabismus: caused by vision problems or, occasionally, retinoblastoma. Always investigate. Rarely gets better on its own . . .
She doesn’t move for a very long time, just stares at the magazine as though she’s trying to choose between Songs of Praise and 24.
Her answer could change everything or nothing, and I am sure she senses that.
‘Don’t be daft, Tim. You’ll be great.’
Denial.
‘But what if I’m not?’
‘We all get low moments. You’re tired, after your exams.’
I am tired, though I can’t sleep without the fuzzy embrace of Wilcox’s benzos. I had to go back to him for supplies in January, partly because Joel got a lot less reliable, but also because I couldn’t bear to see how low he’d fallen. A proper junkie.
When I first realized, I racked my brains to see if I could help. But even if I knew what to do, who am I to advise on kicking an addiction?
Compared to him, I am functioning. At least now I only use medicines, the kind that come in boxes and blister packs.
Maybe the Adderall has worked and I have passed. I’ve got it wrong before. I was sure I’d failed my A levels but got three As. Though in retrospect, was predicting my failure a case of wishful thinking? If I’d got lower grades, I wouldn’t be in this mess now.
Kerry is still smiling at me. An evening like this, where she’s not working, and I’m not studying, and we’re both a bit merry, is so rare. If I let this go, we might even end up in bed for the first time in months. (My problem, not hers. The only reason I haven’t asked Wilcox for Viagra is because he would never let me forget it.)
‘I am tired, Kerry. You’re right.’
She takes a sip of her wine. ‘Look, you’ll be OK. We’ve always been here for each other. Right from the first day we met.’
I close my eyes and see it so clearly: my mother dragging me into the Smiths’ garden, Kerry smiling, leading me towards the table, where a pile of chocolate biscuits was melting in the sun.
Within seconds, her sister had turned a hose on us both, soaking us from head to toe. ‘Bloody Marilyn.’
Kerry smiles. ‘But we dried each other off and we got extra Wagon Wheels. We always work things out. Nothing’s changed.’
She’s wrong. Everything’s changed. She just doesn’t know it yet.
I lean across to kiss her, wishing I could relive the last four years, do all of it differently. All of it, except for this bit.