The One Day You Were My Husband (63)
I didn’t feel like an asset. For the first time since I’d started medical school, I felt like a highly visible liability. But something we’d done must have worked, because after a week, they told me they were satisfied that it was appropriate for me to continue at the hospital.
Autumn brightened the skies, and London felt fortifying and vital. I clung on to my new routine as if my life depended upon it. At 6:40 a.m. I’d be on the bike Johan had bought me, on my carefully planned route to work: Blackfriars, Embankment, the three royal parks, Edgware Road, done. Then the oblivion of the medical day: awkward medical students, cocky medical students, post-take ward consultations, phlebotomist chasing, blood chasing, scan chasing. Patients with loose cannulae and empty IV bags, patients wanting someone to bring them the slice of toast they requested three hours ago, patients wanting to know if they would live or die. There was never enough time, and with my increased teaching responsibilities came new stress, but the hours I spent in that hospital were my survival.
Dad took me out for dinner every Wednesday night at the same Italian restaurant in Aldwych he’d been going to since he was a junior civil servant. He messaged me every morning with quotes from some book Nicola had bought him about gratitude. Dell was in touch daily, too; and Mum, although she’d gone back to her flat after a few days of trying and failing to coexist with Maya in mine.
My sister flew back to Colorado after two weeks. She compiled a list of therapists and made me promise to call one. I missed her the moment she left but was grateful to be on my own. It was the state I knew best.
Within five hours of my first emergency on-call shift, I’d taken out an appendix. On the cycle ride home that night, dodging Ubers and couriers and buses in the dark, I smiled.
But the grief bore down, day and night. It didn’t fade, and anger began to flourish in its foothills. Dell started taking me running with her in the evenings. “Keep you away from that bloody laptop,” she’d say, as we ran hard and fast into the night, breath fanning out above us as the temperatures dropped and dropped.
Not long before Christmas, I applied and was accepted for the job in Johannesburg. It would start the following autumn, when I finished my first registrar year at St. Mary’s. I should have applied last spring, like I’d wanted to. I should not have fallen in love and stayed in the UK.
* * *
—
Soon after my Johannesburg job was confirmed, Johan’s family flew over to London and emptied our flat. I learned of this only when I arrived home at eight in the evening to find the front door wide open.
His parents had already gone but Lucas was still there, vacuuming away the final traces of his big brother. My things were piled into a cheap suitcase that looked like it had been bought from Whitechapel Market that morning.
Lucas was apologetic, but ultimately it had been his parents’ decision to terminate the lease, and he’d felt obliged to come and help.
“They are not being very well,” he said, not quite able to meet my eye. “My mother is very ill because of this events. I am sorry, Carrie.”
“They can’t do that! This is my home!”
He looked desperate. “I am sorry. But…well, oh dear.”
“Oh dear what, Lucas?”
“Ah…the thing is, Carrie, Johan wants you to leave this flat also. He has asked us to make this happen.”
“He wants…Why? What do you mean?”
“We have no choice. I am sorry.”
That was the last time I ever saw Lucas.
Dad wasn’t in London that week; he’d finished work for Christmas and was in Devon with Nicola. Dell was on call. None of my other friends answered their phones. A hidden hazard of having only medical friends in your phone contacts, I thought, as I dragged the suitcase toward Whitechapel, wondering what to do. No help at hand when you find yourself thrown out of your home by the man you married a couple of months earlier.
* * *
—
My mother’s flat was five minutes’ walk from St. Mary’s Hospital, between Lancaster Gate and Paddington, but she’d only invited me inside a handful of times. It was the place she’d gone when she left Devon and moved back to London, and I’d always suspected that having Maya or me there would have been too painful a reminder of her failings. Tonight, even though she’d agreed to put me up, she still insisted we meet at a Malay restaurant nearby.
My cheap suitcase sat beside us at a small teak table, on which sat a great pile of my mother’s concern for me: rich, fatty bak kut te and a pork-rib stew with salty yau char kwai for dipping. There was a bowl of nasi lemak, some sardine sambal, and cucumber and peanut salad. I had to make Mum stop when she tried to order roasted okra and sambal potatoes, “just in case.”
Mum watched me trying to eat for a few moments before saying, “Carrie, I want you to have my flat.”
I put my chopsticks down, grateful for a chance to stop pretending I was hungry.
“I’ve been offered CEO of the Long Foundation. They’re a women’s charity in Brighton. I’m going to move down there, and I want you to have my flat for the next year while you do this job in Paddington. Your new hospital’s on the doorstep, and you need stability right now. You need somewhere to call home.”
“But…surely you can commute?”