The One Day You Were My Husband (19)

I had never been in trouble in my life. Aged twenty-six and not one black mark.

“Do you think she’ll be OK? I keep thinking about the sound she made when the bike hit her. The guy must have been doing at least fifty. It was a twenty limit.”

He had a slight accent, I realized now—something European. Maybe Dutch? Weren’t they tall and almost universally good-looking? His eyes were polar blue, startlingly pale and bright, but his skin was deeply tanned, as if he worked outside all year. He looked incongruously healthy, and I didn’t see a great many healthy bodies in my line of work. There was a gentle smear of white paint on the back of his wrist. My eyes kept returning to it, as if to find an anchor in the depths I’d nearly drowned in a few minutes ago.

What had been going on back there?

I think you’re carrying a lot of repressed rage, my sister liked to say. Don’t forget, Carrie, we had the same childhood. It’s got to come out someday.

I resolved not to mention this outburst to her. It was just a release of pressure after weeks of exam revision and on-call shifts. Nothing more sinister.

“Deniz has suffered very serious injuries,” I said. “Beyond that, I can’t really say anything, I’m afraid. The police officer said you were a random witness, is that right? You’re not related to her?”

He shook his head, which meant there really wasn’t a thing I could say to him. She’s in good hands, I could have offered, but I didn’t. He didn’t seem like someone who would appreciate platitudes.

I asked him a few questions about the collision, about how Deniz had been thrown several feet into the air before landing on the cold road. He flinched as he described it.

“There were the remains of a hamburger squashed into the tarmac a few inches from her face,” he said. He seemed angry about this. “She deserved better. She was just doing her shopping.”

Then he said something no punter had ever said to me.

“You must be so tired.” His voice had dropped. “We’ve been here for hours and I haven’t seen you stop. All this life and death must leave you like a gutted fish.”

I looked at him, surprised. That was exactly how it felt.

“I’m OK,” I said after a moment. Tiredness was something that my mother, and then my job, had trained me to override. “But I like the imagery.”

“Have you sat down today, rested?” His eyes traveled down to my ID badge. I watched him read my name and then look at my photo.

“I haven’t, no. There’s not much of that in this job. Especially when I’m on call.”

“You can’t sneak off to a cupboard for a lie-down?”

“I mean, I could. But then my bleeper would go off just as I was getting comfy among the mops and Hibiscrub refills.”

He thought about this. “I could hover nearby with your bleeper. Guard the cupboard and then knock if the bleeper went off.”

“It certainly sounds relaxing. The cleaning cupboard floor, a stranger outside the door. I’m sure I’d drift off in no time.”

He smiled. “I’ll vouch for you if that officer does complain,” he said. “You were very impressive back there. Are you still quite junior?”

I nodded.

“I only ask because of the way people spoke to you. You looked like you’d actually been doing this sort of thing for decades.” He laughed suddenly. “Until you lost it. That really was good.”

I smiled. “I’m mortified. Look, I’d better get going.”

I didn’t want to go.

“She looked so small,” he said, ignoring me. This was to become another feature of our relationship: me erecting barriers that Johan politely walked around. Occasionally it would irritate me, but most of the time I’d end up laughing at myself. Nobody had taught me to do that until Johan.

He studied a crack in the ceiling tiles that had been poorly filled with something yellow. When he spoke, his voice had changed. “She thought I was her son.”

I leaned in to hear him better, but that was a mistake. He smelled far too good.

“She saw me again and said, Hello, darling, I missed you, please don’t leave your mama again. I’m scared.”

I saw a lot of emotion in my job. More than I could handle, a lot of the time; the shouting and tears in A&E did not sit well with my preference for controlled conditions. But this man’s grief for the woman in resus, fighting for her life, really touched me.

My bleeper went off and we both glanced down at it.

“Deniz?” he asked.

“I can’t say.” But it would be Deniz, and he could tell by my face; right from the start, he was able to read me. Deniz was being moved to ICU shortly. They probably wanted me back to do the transfer.

“Take good care.” It was the most I felt I could say.

“You take good care, too,” he said, smiling. He stood tall, looking down at me, and those eyes seemed to be saying things they had no business saying.

I turned to head back into the ED, but he called me back.

He got a pen and a small notebook out of his bag. It was a very organized bag. Blue canvas. Even his hands looked tanned, in spite of it being January. I kept noticing that feather of white paint on his wrist.

“I hope Deniz does have a family,” he said, writing in the notebook and tearing out the sheet. “But if she doesn’t, and if she asks for me, I want to be there for her. Is that OK? Can you ask the hospital to call me?”