7 July 2011
The rules I made in my first week at med school help me graduate top of my class five years later.
‘And I’m delighted to award the Davis Medal for the highest mark in the clinical exam to . . .’ The dean hams it up, as though this is Best Picture at the Oscars, rather than an award I already know I’ve won. ‘. . . Dr Kerry Smith!’
My parents, my sister, Ant and Tim are here and they applaud and whoop, along with Hanna, who is graduating too.
Afterwards, we go to a restaurant overlooking the Thames; the city has never looked so stunning and full of promise. When the Olympics come next year, I plan to volunteer at Stratford. Be part of something. Belong.
Dad orders champagne. I offer to pay but he waves me away.
‘It’ll barely make a dent in what we had set aside for your wedding. Or what Marilyn’s cost us.’
My sister looks mildly put out but it doesn’t take much champagne before she perks up again.
At long last, they’ve stopped hoping I might get married again. I am twenty-nine and happy to stay a spinster, though not celibate. I’ve kept my self-imposed rules when it comes to my sex life: no men with any connection to medicine, and no making things official. I’ve not allowed anyone to distract me from the finish line.
‘You’re going to make a brilliant doctor, Kerry,’ Tim says.
‘I know.’
He laughs. ‘I like the new Kerry. She takes no prisoners.’
Marilyn can’t believe I invited Tim, but five years is a long, long time, and he kept his promise to support my studies. He lets out the bungalow and has sent me half the rent and it’s kept me going during training. He lives in Barcelona with Maria now, doing some swanky research job. He even invited me to his wedding last summer, though I couldn’t quite face that. But I’ve seen the photos: he looked far better in the bespoke suit than he did in the Moss Bros one he wore for our wedding. Tim will be thirty in October: being a proper grown-up suits him.
Ant sits down next to me. ‘You did it, Dr Smith.’ He’s married now, with twin baby girls. I didn’t go to his wedding either but he understood. We got close when we were nursing Joel through his rehab, and if he’s wondered, or guessed, why we fell out, he’s never demanded the full story. I told him I’d prefer it if we didn’t talk about Joel and he accepted it unquestioningly. That’s Ant’s style, easy come, easy go.
‘Looks that way,’ I say.
‘I always knew you were born for this, right from when you did that kiss of life business on the Lawns.’
I smile. Remembering that night doesn’t hurt anymore. Or at least, the pain is so distant that I don’t know if it’s real or a residual warning from my neurons to steer clear of what caused the pain. Our bodies do this for self-preservation.
Love, sticking your hand in a fire, ignoring a sore tooth the day before you go to Cambodia on a wild medicine field trip and ending up in agony in the jungle.
All mistakes I will never make again.
And if, occasionally, my survival instincts make me seem standoffish, well, it’s better than, I dunno, bursting into tears because a patient hasn’t made it. If you let the flood gates open, you can’t control what comes out.
‘What next, nerdy girl?’ Ant asks.
‘I’m staying in London. It’s the best place in the world for what I want to do.’
My results mean I got the pick of deaneries for my two foundation years, so I applied to the one attached to the medical school that turned me down five years ago. I have to admit, there’s an element of putting two fingers up to that paternalistic consultant who dismissed me at interview because he thought I’d end up sub-fertile and sobbing as my time ran out. Up yours, mate. I have a niece, a nephew and a job I love. I am too busy to be broody.
Hanna is already quite drunk. ‘I’m going to miss you, grumpy Kerry.’ She’s off to Birmingham, hoping to become a paediatrician, though we both have ten more years ahead before we lose the junior doctor label. I’ll still be a junior when I’m forty.
‘I’ll miss you too. Who else is going to remind me not to be rude to the consultants?’
‘You know it’s for your own good.’
‘Ugh.’ I hate the sycophantic side of medicine. It’s partly why I’ve got my eye on emergency medicine as a specialty, because status doesn’t matter so much in A & E. It’s all hands to the pump – and the defib – when a patient is on the brink.
‘Don’t think of it as creeping, think of it as . . . an investment in your future.’ She tops up her glass. ‘Here’s to you, Dr Smith.’
‘Back atcha, Dr Chang.’
My sister stands up, evidently fed up of me being in the limelight. ‘I still can’t believe that my clumsy, awkward little sister is going to be let loose on real people.’
Tim stands up too and turns to face her. There’s a smile on his face to soften his words, but no mistaking the steel in his voice as he comes to my defence. ‘Your sister has never been awkward or clumsy. She just pushes herself further and harder than anyone else I’ve ever met. No wonder she occasionally gets herself into scrapes.’
‘Occasionally gets herself into scrapes,’ I repeat. ‘I think I’d rather like that as my epitaph.’ And I smile at Tim, the person who knows me best in the world.
Everything is going to be OK.