19 March 2014
I go via ICU when I turn up for my last shift of the week and they tell me Zoë arrested a few hours after surgery and they couldn’t get her back.
I don’t feel anything. My shift is uneventful, though I do three abdominal exams and each time almost expect to feel that same out-of-place pulse that spells catastrophe.
‘What are you up to on your days off?’ the reg asks when I hand over the next morning.
‘Flying.’
He laughs. ‘Our very own Amelia Earhart.’
‘I hope not. She disappeared mid-flight.’
‘Yeah, that’s a point. Who would cover your shifts at the weekend?’
I’m exhausted as I get changed, and it feels as if the tiredness goes even deeper than usual after a run of nights. The idea of being back here at the weekend, and for days, weeks, months, years after that makes me feel almost faint.
But after a decent sleep, I am ready for my flight. Inland, the sky is grey but as I take off, the coastline has a luminescence that draws me. I steer that way.
The numbness I’ve experienced since I learned of Zoë’s death has been different to the usual detachment we were trained to adopt, to protect ourselves from distress at our patients’ prognoses.
Right now, I feel as though I’ve been anaesthetized. My hand on the yoke seems to belong to someone else.
I’ve been flying solo since last year, as often as I can afford it. That’s been one positive about living at home – I have more spare cash for flying hours. It’s the beauty and the peace I usually seek up here, but today I am not soothed by either. The hum of the engine and the rush of the air outside fade away and instead I hear the echo of voices: Zoë’s and Joel’s and my own. Up here, all the infinitesimal outcomes of other decisions I might have made rush past like clouds.
Joel’s resuscitation replays vividly in my head, the feeling of his body, the violence of it. For all these years, I’ve remembered it as a triumph.
Now I can only remember the fear.
I try to put that out of my mind, but now other patients come back to me, all the people I didn’t think I remembered. The countless times I’d congratulated myself on locking the bad stuff away, when really they were waiting for their moment to ambush me with the feelings I should have processed at the time.
I even see Elaine and everything she went through . . .
A bank of nimbostratus obstructs my view and I’m discombobulated. I want to cry but I have to keep it together because I am flying a fucking plane.
A break in the cloud lets through a blinding flash of sunlight. It grows and glows, like water bursting through a dam.
I can’t hold back anymore.
‘Shoreham Control, Piper PA28 Dougal requesting clearance to land.’
‘Piper PA28 Dougal, Shoreham Control, is there a problem?’
Nothing is wrong with the plane, everything is wrong with me.
‘Shoreham control, Piper PA28 Dougal, negative, but requesting clearance.’
As they give me permission, I can’t hold back the tears or the terror that I am disintegrating, piece by tiny piece.
I manage to land before I fall apart completely. I taxi back to the hardstanding in tears, knowing it’s going to take someone else to put me back together.
My counsellor’s name is Earl and he’s the same age as me, and multiply pierced. The room where we meet is as alt-Brighton as he is, with tie-dye cushions and a miasma of joss sticks.
I sit in an IKEA chair that’s identical to one in my second London bedsit. When Earl smiles, the stud in his cheek twitches and I think of how many infected piercings I’ve had to treat over the years.
Half an hour ago, I was in control. All the patients who I’d treated during my shift were still breathing, and no one had gone beyond the target waiting time. Now . . .
‘How does this work?’ I ask him.
‘However you want it to.’
Is that it? I am paying forty-five pounds per fifty-minute session, money I could be putting towards flying hours or even a deposit on a flat, and this so-called expert is pushing all the responsibility back onto me?
‘How long does it usually take until I’m better?’
The smile doesn’t falter. ‘There is no usual. Everyone is unique. It could be a few sessions, or months. Even years.’
I close my eyes. Certainty is what I want: a clear prognosis, an aggressive treatment plan.
‘People often start by telling me what brought them here.’
I open my eyes again. There’s a window facing my chair and a tree beyond that, silhouetted against a blue sky. It is a beautiful day and I’d rather be anywhere but here . . . I am about to say so, when it comes back, the wave of disintegration I experienced in the Piper.
I want to find the words to tell him about it but instead I start to cry, and the tears flow so violently that I don’t know if fifty minutes will be long enough to let them all out.