The One Day You Were My Husband (29)

Johan took a call from a friend in Swedish. I listened to his voice, which sounded even sexier, and decided on the spot to learn Swedish myself. My exams were over; I’d have space. I wanted to speak his language, I thought, as I googled classes in London. I wanted to submerge myself in his world, in him.

And, on the subject of submersion, he was right. I should give scuba diving a try. Maybe he could even teach me. I felt willing to try anything, in that moment.

I washed my scrubs in his washing machine. We didn’t do much sleeping that second night, although he passed out the moment we finally let each other go. I just lay next to him, wanting him too much to be able to wind down.

We left his flat at the same time the next morning, just like any other couple, and he told me he was all in. “Come back tonight, Carrie Cole. And the next night. And the one after that.”

He kissed me. “I need you,” he said, and he looked surprised to hear the words coming from his mouth. “I need you.”





Nine.




I did go back that night, and the night after that. At the time I was living in a gray box in Colliers Wood, which had been helpful during medical school but was not convenient in any way now. Nor, I realized, as I learned the landscape of Johan’s flat, was it much of a home. His was full of ideas, colors, words, beautiful books, and music. Mine had been no more than a place to sleep and study.

“I think we should go on a date,” Johan said on the fourth morning. It was 6:30 and the sun was already bright, fractionating his kitchen into bright stripes through the blind. He was making coffee in a Bialetti on the stovetop. As I had come to expect, he was not wearing any clothes.

I already loved him by then.

“I really don’t want to leave this flat when you’re here. But I think we should celebrate your exams, even if I’m several months late. Plus, I just want to be out there in the world with you.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, please! Where are you taking me?”

He frowned. “Where are you taking me? With your substantial new paycheck?”

“There are no substantial pay checks in the NHS, so you can get that idea out of your head. Besides, I’m still a core trainee. I don’t start as a registrar until October.”

Johan took his coffee off the stove and there was a pause as I thought about a suitable date.

“Maybe diving?”

He stopped pouring his coffee and turned around. “Really?”

“You’re teaching this evening.”

“And you want to join my class?”

“Yes! We could go for drinks afterward. Food. Normal date stuff.”

Johan drank some coffee. “You said you’d have a panic attack. That you’d never dive. What’s changed?”

“I—I decided to reject that kind of thinking.”

He laughed again. “Of course you did.”

“But I also told myself that a woman like me couldn’t get a registrar number, and then I ranked eleventh in the country. My thinking isn’t always to be trusted.”

We watched each other for a few moments. I was still finding it hard to take my eyes off Johan. To believe that if I blinked, or moved suddenly, he would not disappear.

“Before I agree to anything, I want you to tell me what kind of student you are,” Johan said.

“An excellent one! I concentrate hard and take notes.”

“Of course you do. But what I really want to know is, how are you when you don’t get it straight away?”

“Oh, terrible. But I’m really good at pretending to fail with grace. You’d never know I was dying inside.”

From somewhere nearby the disquieting wail of an ambulance, dodging through Whitechapel, seeped into Johan’s kitchen.

He came over to get my bowl. He’d made porridge earlier with apple sauce and cinnamon, brown sugar laced across the surface. It had been exactly what I’d needed for a long day in theater, and exactly what I would never have taken the time to do for myself.

“You always leave a bite of food on your plate,” he said, stopping by the table. “What is that?”

I looked at the single spoonful left in my bowl and told him—truthfully—that I had no idea.

Johan smiled as if to say, I know exactly why that is, but did not enlighten me. He took my single remaining spoonful of porridge and ate it, before adding it to the washing up.

“Let me talk to the dive school and check they’re OK with me teaching someone I know,” he said. Then he turned around. “And for what it’s worth, I would most definitely know you were dying inside. You’re a lot more transparent than you think, Carrie Cole.”

I shut my laptop. Yanika had arranged with one of her colleagues in hepatobiliary for me to assist on a Whipple’s procedure that morning and I’d been reading up. I hadn’t observed one since med school, and it was a complex operation.

I’m not transparent at all, I thought, zipping the laptop back into its sleeve. It was one of the things that drove Dell mad. Nobody knows what’s going on in there, she’d say. You have to tell us, Carrie.

It was simply that Johan could read me in a way nobody else seemed to.



* * *



—

The operation started well. Karl, the consultant, was friendly, which was never a given. After the briefing he put on an excellent playlist of seventies tracks. The energy in the theater was good.