6 February 2006
Parachute jumps are easy.
For real terror so bad you end up with actual shooting pains, nothing beats med school interviews.
‘Sorry we’re running a bit late, but you’re up next,’ the uni administrator tells me, and I smile, even though what I want to do is run away.
I don’t remember it being this bad when I was seventeen and believed that with enough hard work, I could make life go exactly according to plan.
Now I’m older, but not much wiser. The waiting room is full of sixth formers: only six years between me and them, but it might as well be sixty. They look so fresh and hopeful and I can’t imagine how the panel will be able to judge who might grow up to be decent doctors, and who should never be let within five hundred yards of a patient.
The ‘kids’ have all been chatting about their applications and UKCAT scores, and though they haven’t deliberately excluded me, I’ve kept quiet. Even though I have the right grades at last, one of my four choices didn’t call me for interview. I’m still waiting to hear if the two entrance panels I did face liked me enough to choose me over a malleable teen.
Today is my last chance.
‘Kerry Smith, please?’
As I stand up, the room seems to sway, but I take a breath to centre myself before I follow the administrator into the corridor, towards the interview room.
Come on, Kerry, I tell myself, you’ve saved people’s lives, this should be a doddle.
I open the door and see the panel sitting in front of me, silhouetted against the bright sun streaming through the window. Here goes.
Afterwards, I try to call Tim but it goes to voicemail and I leave a message.
‘Hi. I guess you might be delving into someone’s small bowel, but call me when you get a chance. It went all right, I think. A bit more old school than the other two interviews, but nothing I couldn’t handle. We’ve got some hideous tea-break chat ordeal to get through now; bet I end up spilling boiling liquid over someone. Speak later.’
Tim hasn’t been back home for a fortnight and I miss him. He’s halfway through his second rotation, in GI surgery, and the hours are so insane that he’s now staying in digs when he’s rostered for several days. Driving home would be too dangerous.
Is that why I still don’t feel married? Elaine dying only days after our wedding meant we spent our honeymoon period waiting for her funeral. The day after, Tim started his F1 while I went back to work.
At least I’ve found a kind of peace alone in the bungalow, sorting Elaine’s meagre things into piles: keep, charity shop, rubbish. Tim hasn’t had enough time to mourn her – doctor foundation training cannot accommodate personal tragedies – and when we do spend time together, he behaves oddly. Sometimes he’s distant, almost dreamy. Other days, he’s hyper. But he’s still going to NA and surely that has to mean he’s not back on the pills . . .
‘Miss Smith!’
I turn towards the voice, already knowing it belongs to Mr Newcombe, the patrician surgeon who chaired the panel. My smile falters as he looks pointedly at my ring finger.
‘Though, if I’m not mistaken, this suggests you’re not a Miss at all?’
I nod. ‘Well spotted! I got married last July. My husband has just started his foundation year in the Marine deanery.’
‘Can’t win ’em all, eh?’ he says, and I can’t tell whether he’s referring to my marriage or the fact that Tim’s training placement is seen as a backwater. ‘What can I get you?’
I ask for a black coffee, wondering if I should have offered to serve him instead. Behind him, I see the other candidates gathering, ready for their turn to impress him.
He hands me my coffee. He’s probably in his mid-fifties but has a silver-fox aura about him, well-manicured hands and an expensive suit that makes him look slimmer than he is. He hasn’t shared his specialty, but I can imagine he’d make a mint privately in gynae. ‘So, is Smith your name or your husband’s?’
‘Mine. I am quite attached to it, as I’ve lived with it my whole life.’
‘How long have you and your husband been together?’
My smile falters but I can’t think of a polite way to tell him it’s none of his bloody business. ‘We were always friends, but it turned into more in the last few years.’
‘How sweet,’ he says. ‘And children?’
I shake my head. ‘No.’
His expression doesn’t change. I guess he must have decades of practice, whether he’s breaking the best or the worst news. ‘Of course, you’ll be in your early thirties by the time you make it into your foundation years if you start medicine this September, won’t you?’
I did GCSE maths, so, funnily enough, I have worked that out. ‘I’ll be just thirty, actually.’
‘Your early thirties, as I said. There are plenty of happy medic couples, though mostly they started out at the same time, so by the time that biological clock starts ticking, the female should be on track to finish her GP training or whatever tedious family-friendly area she’s picked. You’re taking it to the wire!’ He laughs, as though we’re sharing this joke.
I have no idea how to respond. It would have been illegal to raise it in the interview itself, but this chat is deniable, his word against mine.
Do I lie and tell him I’m infertile? ‘I don’t want kids. I’m happy staying an auntie.’
As I say the words, it occurs to me they might well be true.
‘Good for you, Miss Smith. And your husband feels the same way?’
‘He’s incredibly supportive. As I have been of him throughout his training. It’s my turn now.’
Mr Newcombe says nothing and before I can change the subject, a couple of the sixth formers launch themselves at him. The coffee tastes stale. I have a sense that my wedding ring has made whatever I said in my interview utterly pointless.
So I am down to two chances of getting what I want.
On the train home, my anger at the way the surgeon dismissed me festers.
Yet even though I loathe his blatant sexism, it’s made me wonder why Tim and I have never discussed having kids. During his training, he even enjoyed Ob/Gyn, but it never led to a discussion about us having a family one day.
I can’t imagine Tim as a father. It seems too messy, too risky, too full of uncertainties to be something he’d want to do. And although I don’t blame him for his struggles with empathy, could I make up for that lack if we had a child?
I let myself into the bungalow, always half expecting to hear the trill of Elaine’s hello there, hen. I bend down to pick up the post: bills and more bills. We should sell up, clear the debts, buy a smaller flat, but there’s no point till we know if I’ve got a place at med school, and where.
As I rifle through the envelopes, the last one is addressed to me. It has an NHS frank, and for a moment, I am convinced that today’s interview panel have somehow conspired to get my rejection to me even faster than I could travel back.
My mood plummets even further when I realize it must have come from one of my other two interviews. The envelope isn’t thick enough for it to be good news. Still, I open it.
Dear Miss Smith,
Thank you for attending our interview day. I’m sorry to inform you . . .
Disappointment feels like a wave of physical pain. On paper, I have everything they’re asking for. I have worked so bloody hard. The first time I failed, I knew that my exam results weren’t me, they were a result of what I’d done or hadn’t done.
The years between then and now were tough, but there was still the promise of something better ahead. I had, as all the teachers said, all the time in the world.
But life moves on. Miss has become Mrs. Tim is Dr Palmer. Everything has changed. Maybe I’ve been fooling myself by believing I might ever become a doctor.