Stronger Than Death

by Manda Scott

  I took the mug from her hand and put it down on the floor. ‘You’re a good anaesthetist, Dee. That makes a difference.’

  ‘No, I’m not. I anaesthetised her.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Claire. She had a cystotomy. Two weeks ago. I did the anaesthetic.’

  ‘So she had an anaesthetist who understood. Better you than anyone else. At least you care.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I pretend, but underneath, I am just another white coat, no different to all the rest. I saw her and I knew who she was and what she was going through and I still sent her under and brought her out again.’

  ‘That’s what you’re there for. What else could you do?’

  ‘I could have let her die on the table, Kellen. It’s what Beth always wanted. To go out under anaesthetic. Quick, peaceful, not knowing …’ She looped her fingers together and locked them over one knee. ‘I knew that and still I couldn’t do it. Twelve years and I was more worried about my career and the protocol and not having a twenty-three-year-old patient die on the table for no good reason.’

  ‘You’d be in front of an inquiry now if you’d let her go.’

  ‘I know. So I am afraid of the men in suits and Claire Hendon has to live through three weeks of unbridled hell.’ Her eyes closed and reopened. The world outside the window didn’t change. ‘Two weeks ago, I thought there were still things I could do that would make a difference. Now—she shrugged, short and loose—’what’s the point?’

  ‘The Unit? Is that not the point?’

  ‘No, not any more. It’s not enough.’ She turned to look at me. Her face was a study in exhaustion, close to defeat. ‘I don’t want to go on, Kells. Just at this moment, I really, really don’t want to go on.’

  And how often in this place have I heard those words said with that tone? But never before from a member of the staff. Never before from a friend.

  Outside, Sally Souter led her father’s dogs back towards the car park. A sprig of heather stuck out from the collar of each. Tomorrow, as we change the dressing, we will walk them in winter. In the meantime, there is nothing I need to do in the Unit that won’t wait.

  ‘Dee … if I offered to take you home, would you come?’

  ‘What? No. I’ll run. I need the exercise. Thanks.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to your home. I meant home to the farm. I don’t think you need to be on your own just now.’ I collected the empty mugs and stacked them on the trolley by the bin. ‘We could go for a ride up to the loch and back. You don’t have to stay after that if you don’t want to.’

  She thought about it, staring out at the sycamores. Something changed in the hard planes of her face. She looked up at me. ‘Would you mind?’

  ‘Let me get my bag.’

  ‘How’s the hangover?’

  ‘Getting better.’ It was better after I went walking with Jack Souter. Letting go of reality does that sometimes.

  ‘I didn’t know you drank that much.’

  ‘I don’t. Not normally. I needed to sleep.’

  ‘Did it work?’

  ‘More or less. After I finished throwing up. I’m sorry if I kept you awake.’

  ‘You didn’t.’

  ‘Thank you. Do you feel any better?’

  ‘Don’t ask.’

  Fair enough. I lay back on the towel and looked at the sky. Pure blue, not a single cloud. And still. It’s not often still up by the loch. When we rode up, I could feel the breath of a breeze. Now, it might simply have been the breath of our moving. Behind me, the dog lay panting, too lazy to roll into the shade of a rock. The horses moved slowly, cropping harsh mouthfuls of grass. Horse flies whined. A hoodie crow cackled in passing. Jack Souter would love it here.

  Dee lay beside me face down on her towel, soaking in the sun. Small beads of sweat gathered at the nape of her neck and in the dips of her spine. All the way down the back of her head, the short-cropped hair gathered the light and held it close in a halo of liquid fire. I reached out to touch it and found an unexpected softness.

  She lay very still. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Seeing if reality matches the image.’

  ‘Does it ever?’

  ‘Sometimes.’ But not now. In so many ways this woman is not what she seems. I let my hand fall away. ‘Did you cut it for Beth?’ I asked.

  ‘Kind of. There were a lot of women on her ward with no hair. It was a symbol, I think, of what medicine can do in the name of healing.’ She propped her chin on her hand and stared out across the still surface of the loch. ‘But I think if I’m honest, I did it more for me. I needed a break, something to make the difference from who I was then to who I am now.’

  ‘Did it work?’

  ‘It did to begin with. I probably don’t need it now, I’m not going back.’ She rolled on one side, shading her eyes with the crook of her elbow. ‘Should I grow it, do you think?’

  I tried to imagine a Dee with longer hair but my mind is not that agile. ‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘It wouldn’t fit.’

  ‘Good.’ She smiled, as dry as ever, her eyes odd-coloured in the light. ‘That was the right answer.’

  We lay quiet for a while after that. I turned over to lie on my stomach and watched the reflection of a solitary cloud drift out across the surface of the water. My mind drifted with it, teasing out the threads of courage and despair, matching them side by side with my own, and finding mine shorter, weaker, thinner, altogether less well-formed. I am a product of my parents, my school, my peers. For all my early life I was going to be a doctor. I was five years qualified before it ever occurred to me that I could do anything different, and even then the parting was half-hearted and short-lived and I am back now because I have nothing else that I can do. It is not an honorable thought.

  ‘Kellen?’ I felt her finger, cool on my shoulder, and turned to look. She stretched on her side and sat up. Her smile was warm. Wherever she had been, it was a more friendly place than mine. ‘Can we swim in there?’ she asked.

  ‘Feel free.’

  ‘Not on my own.’ A hand reached down to my arm. ‘Swimming’s never any fun on your own.’

  The water was cold. Shockingly, breathlessly cold. It burned, hotter than the sun, making wax of muscles that should have been swimming so that I felt like a rag doll, weighed down by the water. I swam in small circles near the edge and then turned back and stepped out on to the grass and the dry warmth of the towel. Dee is immune to the cold. She reached the rock of the far shore, turned and pushed off and swam back towards me in a strong, rhythmic crawl, stroke after stroke making white waves in the green ice of the water. The blonde halo of hair sleeked down on her scalp like a swimming cap, growing thinner with every stroke. By the time she reached the bank beside me for the second time, it was invisible, a translucent sheen. I thought she might come out then but she flipped on her back and reached out again and swam, more lazily now, to the place at the head of the loch where the river drops down from the heights of the ben. She found a rock with a flat top, pulled herself up on to it and dived off, neat and clean, and raced, a full, thrashing butterfly, back to the shore. Her breath was coming hard when she stopped, the way it does when she runs. She stood up in the shallows, the water streaming down from her shoulders, eyes and teeth bright against darker, sun-drunk skin. I’d say that her smile, this once, was real. She swivelled round on one heel to face me.

  ‘That was good. Thank you. I’m glad I came.’

  ‘Good.’ I threw her a towel and she came to sit on the grass beside me, rubbing away the jitters and the goose bumps and the wrinkling skin. ‘There are apples in the saddle pack.’

  ‘You’re just desperate to get me to eat something, aren’t you?’

  ‘No. I’m just desperate to eat. You don’t have to join in.’

  An apple lobbed on to the turf by my cheek. ‘Has the headache gone yet?’

  ‘Totally. Yours?’

  ‘I didn’t have a headache.’

  ‘But has it gone?’


  No answer. Just a hard, crunching bite, white teeth into acid skin. Then: ‘Roll over, my towel’s wet.’

  I rolled over, one arm angled up to shade my eyes from the sun. She lay down on her stomach beside me, elbows propped on the grass, working her way through the apple. I felt the cool of the water and the warm of her skin beneath it, the soft shift of her breathing. We lay in silence for a while and then, in time, I heard her voice, quiet and musing. ‘There was someone else, wasn’t there, before Nina?’

  I wasn’t expecting that. Not at all. I haven’t thought that far back for a long, long time. I’m not sure I want to, particularly. I closed my eyes to the sun. ‘Her name was Bridget.’

  ‘Were you together long?’

  ‘Eight years. And then another four when we should have been but I was too pig-headed to go home and apologise for being a total shit.’

  ‘And then she found someone else?’

  ‘No. Then she died.’

  ‘Oh.’ A soft sound in the silence. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The apple cores lay on the grass by my hand. I picked them up and took them to the horses; tossed one over to Balder out at the place where the grass meets the heather. Maddie came in for hers, blowing warm breath on my shoulder, so much more gentle than the colt. I ran my hand across the brown and white patches of her skin as she ate. I always wanted a skewbald. It took years to persuade Sandy that she wasn’t going to taint his precious breeding plans and even now he isn’t sure. Colour prejudice is alive and well and living in central Scotland. I hadn’t thought, until now, of what Bridget might have said about that.

  The mare finished her share and pushed her nose to my chest, turning me back where I came from. Dee lay quiet on the towel, her hands clasped, chin looped on the hammock of her fingers, staring out across the loch. The breeze was up, cutting small ruffles on the surface. The dog closed her eyes and stretched out in the shade of the saddles. Nothing else moved. I walked over and sat, cross legged, on the towel.

  ‘Does it not feel like a betrayal?’ she asked. Her eyes were still on the loch. Her voice was soft and rounded and smooth, like a rock from the river. Questing but not intruding.

  ‘Does what not feel like a betrayal?’

  ‘Being with Nina.’

  Difficult. I had to think about that one, too. Then, eventually: ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s different. I’m different. She’s different.’

  ‘Even at the start?’

  The start was hard for all kinds of reasons. Bridget, oddly, wasn’t one of them. ‘No. Never. Mostly, I wanted to be able to tell her what was happening.’

  A curlew flew over, silently. I was glad. I didn’t need, just then, that kind of keening.

  ‘Do you think she knows?’

  ‘About Nina? I don’t know.’

  ‘But it would be good to think so?’

  ‘Maybe.’ But if she doesn’t, it’s because it doesn’t matter.

  Another space. Her face was quite still. I am learning, I think, to see beneath that. I picked a stalk of grass and chewed on the end. It’s fifteen years since she went into medicine. It’s a long, long time to be single. ‘Dee, has there been anyone for you since Beth?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because it would feel like a betrayal?’

  ‘I think so.’ She rolled over, on to her side, facing me. She reached out a hand. It slid into mine, hand in glove. ‘And I haven’t wanted it. Yet.’

  They are grey-green, her eyes, and quite still, with tiny pin-point pupils narrowed down by the sun. Her hand is cool and still damp from the swim. Beads of water gather along her collar bone. A moment ago, they rocked with the rhythm of her breathing. Now, they are still.

  In another time and another place, this could be so different.

  ‘Dee …’

  Her hand changed. It didn’t move, but it changed. Her eyes stayed on mine. ‘You’re married. I know.’ She smiled; a real smile, no masks. ‘It’s OK. You can relax … Life is complicated enough. I wasn’t going to do anything. Just that … we needed to know. I needed to know.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re too good a friend.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She moved away half an inch. Her hand stayed in mine. I squeezed it. ‘Thank you.’

  She squeezed back. The smile teased, gently and without rancour. ‘Say something different?’

  ‘I can’t. There’s nothing left. You said it all.’

  ‘No.’ She pulled herself up and sat facing me, knee to knee. ‘Not all of it. There’s “life’s too short” as well.’

  ‘Maybe. That one doesn’t fit so well with all the others.’

  ‘I know. That’s why I didn’t say it. And then again’—she swivelled her hand and we sat, palm to palm, fingers splayed—‘there’s more to life than sex.’

  ‘There is.’ I reached out my free hand, ran my fingers a second time through the damp lawn of her hair. ‘You need to ask Lee about that.’ I changed the palm press, slid my hand back into hers. ‘I’m sorry. Do you mind?’

  ‘Of course.’ Her fingers looped through mine and locked. Her smile was distant, gently mocking. ‘But I’d mind more if you said anything else.’ She stood up, pulling the towel with her as she went. ‘You’re one of the few constant things in my life, Kellen Stewart. I couldn’t handle it just now if you changed.’ She reached down a hand and lifted me up to my feet. ‘It’s getting late. If we don’t go soon, they’ll send out search parties. Shall we go down and see if we can find something in the freezer to surprise them for dinner?’

  The fire glows low in the grate. The windows hang open, the doors with them. The updraught of the flames draws air into the room more than if the fire was not lit. If I need an excuse for a fire, that is it. And the cat likes it; there is that as well.

  A bottle of wine stands on the hearth, close to empty, the dregs in the bottom too warm now to be worth finishing. Dee is in bed in the spare room, chaste in a borrowed T-shirt with the promise of spare clothes for the morning. She’s Nina’s size more than mine. Not quite so angular, perhaps, but not far off. We’ll find something.

  I lie back on the rug in front of the fire. The cat stretches out beside me, purring his ancient-cat purr. He was Bridget’s before he was ever mine, the last of the links to a past that feels so long ago, it could be another life. Except there are memories and things learned, which make a difference to the way we live now. It is not good to make the same mistakes too often.

  ‘Drink?’

  ‘If there’s something cold.’

  ‘There’s apple juice in the fridge.’ Bare feet scuff across the floor. A glass arrives on the hearth. Firelight makes it amber, turning the juice to liquid gold. The sharp, bright taste of it clears the mellow memory of the wine. Nina sits on the floor, legs crossed at the ankles, leaning back against the weight of the fireside chair. I roll over and look up into deep, walnut eyes. They ask a question. She reaches out to touch the cat. He is our point of common contact. ‘Do we have something to discuss?’

  I sit up with my back to the other chair. That she feels free to ask says something. I stand my glass, with care, on the hearth, and shake my head. ‘No.’

  ‘Not yet? Or not at all?’

  ‘Not at all. Not now, not ever.’

  ‘Why not?’

  I have to think about that one. It is important for both of us to know, for now and for later. There are words, and there is the truth. Only one of these matters. The last of the flames flickers down, leaving a bank of peat glowing like lava in the grate. Her eyes hold mine, mellow in the reddening light, still searching. In time I find the answer. I stretch out a foot, push it up against hers. We don’t need the cat as intermediary. ‘She isn’t you.’

  A hand reaches down. Cool fingers wrap around my ankle. She smiles, a half-lit quirk of a smile. ‘Thank you.’

  It was Wednesday night. For a space, the world was at peace.

 
You could smell the mortuary from halfway up the corridor: the ugly, sweet, clinging stench of week-old meat left out in the sun. Melting and fly blown, like Jack Souter’s arm distilled and condensed and sprayed out through the air conditioning. The room was busy with folk ostentatiously not in uniform. I stood at the back looking at a semi-circle of tall, faceless officers of the law. I don’t carry a handkerchief but it comes as a necessary accessory, it seems, for a man not-in-uniform. Handkerchiefs: cotton, white, six inches by six inches square, noses for the holding of. Lee caught my eye through the crowd. She shook her head. I left. Clearly she didn’t get Friday afternoon off.

  The gods send these things, sometimes, for a reason. In theory, I could still have taken the rest of the afternoon off and gone back to the farm. If it wasn’t for the heat, I probably would have done. But it was too hot to work. Too hot to ride. Too hot seriously to contemplate anything more active than sitting still in the shade with the cat. I would have done that, probably, but for a mounting pile of unfiled case records on my desk and a bad conscience over a backlog of reading, planned but never done. I worked for an hour or so in the Library until the heat and the clattering air conditioning drove me out and back to the Unit to catch up on the paperwork. And then, without any clear intention and certainly without being part of the rota, I was on the ground floor, walking along the primrose-yellow corridor towards Jack Souter’s room.