by Jenni Ogden
“Oh Celia, I know, I know. Is there someone I can call for you? Has the nurse spoken to you about talking with someone; a social worker perhaps or a minister or priest—I don’t know if that would help?”
Celia didn’t seem to hear. “Alfie’s parents are at our place with the children. Chrissie is only two; she won’t understand why her daddy doesn’t come home.” She wiped the back of her hand over her eyes and face, but her tears kept coming. “Our dog died last month and Jack was so upset. He’s only five. Alfie’s his hero. He got Jack a guitar for his birthday and he’s already learned some chords. I can’t even play the guitar. How will he learn now without his daddy?”
My hand was rubbing Celia’s stooped back. What can I do?
“I want my Mummy and Daddy.”
The childish names hung in the air and my arm tightened around her; almost a hug. “Where are they?” I asked, my fingers crossed behind Celia’s back. Please make them still be alive and on their way to their daughter’s side.
“Their plane arrives tonight. They live in Sydney. All my family live in Sydney. I feel so alone here and now I don’t even have Alfie.”
“I know what that’s like, to miss home. My parents and brother live in New Zealand. But your parents will soon be here; it will be easier then.”
Celia raised a blotchy face. “We knew you were a Kiwi. You’ve still got a bit of an accent. I know it’s silly but that’s why I was really happy you were doing Alfie’s operation. We’re family really, Aussies and Kiwis, aren’t we? When things go wrong.” She lurched towards me and I opened both arms and held her.
Back in the corridor I hurried towards the escalator, head down, wanting only to get out. As the door slid open another doctor followed me in and I stifled a groan. The last person I needed to see right now was Jim Mason.
“Georgia. Sorry about that young patient of yours. I was in the observation room when he died. His poor wife was in a bad way so I had a bit of a chat to her. Tried to explain that these operations always carry a risk and it was simply bad luck.”
“I’ve just been talking to her. She seemed to understand.” I sighed. “It’s a terrible outcome.”
“I should e-mail you the reference to that latest paper on incidental aneurysms. It seems pretty clear that they shouldn’t be clipped when they are that small. It’s a shame you hadn’t read it before you made that call.”
“His aneurysms weren’t as small as those in that study. I did give Mr. Juvnik all the options.”
“Lighten up, Georgia. I know it’s been a struggle for you taking on some of Peter’s load. Perhaps you should take a few days off and I can cover for you. It’s one of the advantages of being single and not having kids. I get some quality sleep from time to time.”
“I thought you were divorced?”
“That’s what I said. Single.” He winked at me.
“My family make my job easier, not harder. At least I can understand how Celia must feel as a mother.”
“Touché.” He grinned. “I don’t think you were at that seminar a couple of weeks ago when that American researcher was talking about her study on why patients sue their doctors?”
“No. I was covering for Peter at a Department Heads’ meeting. As you well know.”
“Bummer. Well you missed an interesting talk. Right up your alley.”
I kept silent and waited for the door to open so I could escape.
“She found that patients whose surgery had been stuffed up were less likely to sue their doctor if they liked him—or her— than if her bedside manner wasn’t too good. Didn’t matter if the doctor was blatantly incompetent and caused massive unnecessary damage.”
“How unsurprising.”
“So, you’ll be fine. One thing you have is a nice touchy-feely way with your patients.”
“I can only hope such groundbreaking research gave you some insight into your own inadequacies,” I said, willing the door to slide open. It heard my plea and Jim splayed one hand towards me, ushering me out. I narrowed my eyes at him and received a wink back.
“My bedside manner is more than adequate. I can provide plenty of references should you request them, madam.”
“Creep,” I muttered, as I walked away from him as quickly as I could without actually running. “Next time I’ll say it to your bloody face.”
That night, I dreamed of Danny. It was the same nightmare that had robbed me of sleep, again and again, in that first empty year after he was gone. In my dream he was holding me close as we danced across the moonlit beach. And then he slipped from my arms and I was clutching only a tangled mass of red seaweed, its lifeblood seeping in a thin stream into the white sand.
I woke, clammy with fear, and lay still for a moment while the dream receded and the warmth of Adam’s body, curled around mine, calmed my pounding heart. His arms tightened around me and I turned in his embrace. In the harsh yellow streetlight filtering through the small window above our bed I could see him looking at me with sleepy dark eyes. I inched my mouth across the gap between us and kissed his warm lips, his familiar soapy smell rescuing me from my past.
“You OK?” he mumbled drowsily.
“Just a dream. Go back to sleep.”
“I hope you’re not still stressing out over Mason’s nasty comments.”
“Why? Do you think he’s right?”
“Mason’s a sexist bully. But he might have a point about the crazy workload you’ve taken on given you have to deal with all of us as well.”
“So you think he’d be a better director because he doesn’t have a family to care about?”
“Personally I don’t give a toss about Mason, and from what I know of him he’d be a bloody terrible director. He’s got the empathy of a shark. But that has nothing to do with whether you should take such a massive role on. Lara and Finbar miss you.”
“Miss me? I’m always here for them.”
“I know you try to be, but more often than not you don’t get home until after dinner and by then they’re stuck in their rooms doing their homework. Not to mention all the weekends you’ve been on call.”
“Don’t you want me to apply? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No, it is not. I’m simply saying you shouldn’t rush into it. Lara seems fine now, but she’s still mulling over the Danny mystery. It’s not going to go away. And Finbar asked me the other day if I thought you might be able to be one of the parents who goes on their school camp in June.”
“Why didn’t he just ask me?”
“Because he’s a sweet kid and he didn’t want to pressure you. He knows you have zero spare time.”
“Oh, Adam.”
“He’ll be fine. He’s proud of you. We all are. But you do need to take better care of yourself. Which means it’s time to stop worrying and go to sleep.”
Adam pulled me close and I snuggled into his bare chest, my tense muscles gradually relaxing as his breathing deepened. But my mind was still revolving, thinking now about Lara and Finbar and how lucky I was to have them, and worrying about Celia and her children, bereft of the man they loved, his death warrant signed by me the day he walked into my clinic.
Chapter 4
Easter came at just the right time. I had four days off and we escaped to a holiday cottage on the Devon coast. Warmish weather, long walks, and fires on the beach. By the time we got back to London on Monday evening, I felt almost ready for the hospital again.
But on Tuesday morning I didn’t feel quite so keen and lingered over breakfast, reluctant to leave my family. Finbar sitting in the sunny window seat, eating an overflowing bowl of muesli, engrossed in his book as usual. And Lara back to her old self. Today she was handing in her ‘Who Am I’ assignment, which, she said, was based on a certain degree of deceit. Her latest ploy was trying to guilt-trip me into taking the family to New Orleans. “We could go in the summer holidays; it could be my sixteenth birthday present. It’d be so awesome to find the club where Danny sang. And we could track down my grand
parents and perhaps even my great-grandmother. Please?”
I’d fobbed her off with a “We’ll see,” and hoped she’d forget it. But of course she wouldn’t. New Orleans. All that amazing music. Lara would be in heaven.
She was singing right now, standing at the bench, buttering her toast. Even at this ridiculous hour of the morning her voice was rich and soulful. I was so lucky. Kids with deep passions. Books and music. Both passions of mine too, even music, in spite of Lara’s unkind comments about my inability to sing in tune. I wasn’t that bad, and being able to sing wasn’t a prerequisite for loving music. I’d grown up with it; part of the weft of our daily lives. An integral part of my dad’s Maori heritage. Sometimes putting on headphones at the end of a long day and losing myself in sound was the best thing I could do for my sanity. The right music could sweep away the sadness and helplessness that churned me up when I’d had an overload of other folk’s sickness and pain.
Perhaps we could take a week off in late July and go to New Orleans. It was Adam’s university break as well as the kids’ school holidays, and sixteen was a special birthday. When Peter returned to work and I didn’t have to do half of his job as well as my own, I’d find a quiet space to talk to Adam about it. Get a week off, let Jim bloody Mason cover for me. Surely I could cope with going back there after all this time, and we could make a project out of it to see if we could track down Danny’s grandmother. If she’s even still alive. But how would I tell her that she has a great granddaughter? She might have a heart attack. What if she didn’t want to know? What if she blamed me for Danny’s death, like his parents did? Wouldn’t that be worse for Lara than never trying to find them? Simply getting on with her life like I have done? Huh. Some role model I’ve been lately.
I looked over at her as she sat opposite me eating her toast, her nose in a magazine. Sweet sixteen soon. And never been kissed? Her boyish body had blossomed into curves over the past year. Testosterone-ravaged young men were probably already lusting after her. I grinned, and Lara caught it as she got up from the table. She raised her shapely eyebrows. “What are you smiling at? Have I got jam on my nose?”
“Just feeling happy, that’s all.”
Lara grinned back. “That’s what I like to hear mother dear. Keep it up.”
Below the table I crossed my fingers. Hopefully our feisty daughter’s total lack of flirtatious behavior would keep her safe from creeps and premature sex. She was more likely to flatten an admirer’s ego with a well-placed witticism or a flying tackle better fitted to a rugby field than flatter him with fluttering eyelashes and sweet nothings. A beautiful woman in the making though. Danny’s eyes and hair, but thankfully not his—or my—pale skin. Lara turned brown the second the sun peeked out. Another Maori gene sneaking in from Dad. When I was a kid I’d sizzled to a cinder every summer, growing up in New Zealand’s burning sun. I uncrossed my fingers and held my white hand up, wriggling my long fingers with their closely clipped nails.
“’Morning, early birds. What’s with the hand exercises, Sapphire Eyes?”
I flexed my fingers vigorously. “One of the downsides of being a surgeon—a daily finger workout.” I raised my face for Adam’s kiss, then leaned back and looked at him, arching my left eyebrow, a trick I’d perfected by the time I was sixteen. Sexy man. No way did he look forty-six. Jeans and worn black turtle-necked sweater, his hair sticking up in messy spikes. Obviously wasn’t giving any lectures today—on those days he dressed up in a shirt he’d painstakingly ironed the night before. Clueless. Didn’t realize that his doting female students would dote even more if he wore his scruffy look. Not my place to tell him.
I glanced up at the wall clock. “I’d better get my skids on or I’ll miss my train. Unlike some I could mention, I have to show up at work before eight.” I stashed my dishes in the dishwasher and turned to Adam for my goodbye hug, wrinkling my nose when he slid both hands down to squeeze my butt.
“Wench. Behave yourself with all those sex-crazed young doctors.”
I returned his buttock squeeze. “They’re only interested in young nurses, not old married women, and especially not if she’s their senior and better. Shame really.”
“Well then, give bully-boy Mason a good knee in the balls for me.”
“Yes sir. With pleasure.”
Adam kissed my nose. “This is going to be a good week.”
“Yes, it is.” I kissed him back, waved to the kids, and stepped outside into a misty rain.
Squashed between commuters in the crowded carriage of the Maida Vale train, I closed my eyes and focused on the operations scheduled for today. I’d purposefully put surgery for a prolapsed cervical disc in the morning slot, leaving a clipping for a ruptured aneurysm for the afternoon. I tried to ignore the hollow sensation in my gut as I thought about the aneurysm. At least this one had ruptured and really had to be clipped. The patient, a sixty-year-old woman, had been admitted, confused and disoriented, over Easter. I’d talked to David last night and he was satisfied that she was stable enough for surgery today. She’d been a heavy smoker most of her life and David said she looked nearer to eighty than sixty. So it might not be the easiest operation if her arteries were as worn as her face.
As I emerged from Russell Square station my heart squeezed as the hospital loomed up in front of me and Celia’s anguished face was back in my head. Five days since Alfie died. What would Celia do now? Alfie was the Londoner, not her. How could London feel like home without him? Go home Celia. Go home to Australia where your parents can help you, and all the London reminders of your life with Alfie are gone.
I still had the post-mortem report to take on board, and then I’d have to sit through a dissection of the case at the monthly Morbidity and Mortality conference. What would their reaction be if I told them that perhaps it wasn’t just one of those rare complications that would have happened whoever was the surgeon? That I couldn’t entirely rule out the possibility that I’d allowed my own feelings to influence my performance? Jim would love that. Even if Peter decided to let it go—forget it, Georgia, every one of us has bad days—it would hover as a question mark over my suitability to lead a department of egotistic male surgeons.
Damn them, they needed someone who wasn’t always so wary of showing any feelings. I sighed, and saw the startled look on the face of a young doctor in a white coat, scurrying beside me up the hospital steps. The wheels of propriety would drag on; it would probably be months before the coroner’s report appeared, bringing it all back again. Hardly a new scenario for me, but it was never easy. A professional attitude was essential if we were to learn from our errors, but it never did mask the personal—that while we moved on in our professional lives, lessons learned, somewhere out there a family—Alfie’s family— remained devastated by grief. Something I knew about from the inside.
My morning operation had gone well. Bad backs were such a bugger to fix. It often seemed a case of the operation being a success yet the patient continuing to suffer. The nice young man I’d operated on this morning was fit and motivated, so with some good physiotherapy and a dollop of luck his pain would disappear in due course. He mightn’t get back to rugby, but hopefully he’d find some other less punishing sport. And now for the aneurysm. No doubt I’d cope. As soon as I began, everything but the brain under my hands would vanish from my mind.
I felt the familiar surge of adrenalin as I accepted the scalpel from the theater nurse and made the first firm incision along the blue line on the patient’s scalp. I was feeling good, good to be back. The theater was silent except for the sounds of the respirator, suction, and the occasional slap and clink of instruments. No Georgia on my Mind in my theater today, thank you. Time disappeared as I concentrated, and now I could see the aneurysm pulsing off the artery, David’s diligent suctioning and cauterizing clearing my field of view.
Without warning an image of the patient’s face appeared, white with fear under the bloody mush in her open skull. I turned my head away from the microscope, b
linking hard, but when I clamped my eyes back on the eyepieces, all I could see was a blur of grey and red and the cold glitter of the point of the scalpel. I could hear my breathing loud and fast in the echoing theater, my heart was racing and cold sweat was pouring off my forehead. I jerked back from the microscope and carefully moved my hand, still holding the scalpel, away from the brain. I sat shaking, it seemed, for minutes, as I struggled for breath against the vice that was tightening across my chest. Dear god, I’m having a cardiac arrest. I concentrated my whole being on trying to calm my breathing. But the pain was engulfing me and I couldn’t stop it. Someone took the scalpel from me and hands were pulling me off the stool and holding me up as I stumbled across the theater and through the heavy swing doors.
Out in the annex I collapsed on the padded bench. A hand forced my head between my knees and a voice told me to breathe slowly. Then my head was lifted up and a paper bag thrust into my hand.
“Georgia, listen to me. Breathe into this bag. You’re hyperventilating.”
I pushed the hand away. The pain in my chest was making me dizzy. “My heart. I think I’m having an arrest,” I gasped.
“It’s OK, Georgia, we’ll check that out, but try breathing into the paper bag to see if that helps.” The voice was losing its calmness. Strong hands gripped my head and held the bag firmly in place. I gave up and breathed in and out, in and out. The bag made a smacking sound with each breath and the dizziness began to recede. I could feel the blood creeping back into my head and the vice on my chest loosened its grip. I shrugged away the hands holding me and leaned back, saturated with sweat, eyes closed, heart still pounding but slowing now.